You're My World
by greenstuff2
Summary: Was it Lady Luck or just a random twist of fate that threw them together for a second time?
1. Chapter 1

All rights to TG & BBC

 _ **PROLOGUE**_

 _ **You Are My Night And Day**_

"Hey"

His voice was soft, almost a whisper against her skin as he pulled her closer to him tucking her into his side so that she was breathing the warm, slightly fuggy smell of his body, or rather of their bodies, from under the duvet, the familiar smell of one particular warm, sleepy male. She ran her hands over the body that she'd got to know so well in recent weeks, almost as well as she knew her own, so that the firmness of the well-sculpted muscles on his chest and his back and the slight softness of his stomach where he hadn't been able to exercise because of his injuries were incredibly familiar, as was the firmness of his slim, well-muscled backside and legs and then there was his reaction to her closeness and the way she was running her hands over him which was now very evident. Despite all his concerns a few weeks back, the anxiety that he'd done his level best to hide from her, she didn't know that particular reaction nearly as well as she knew the rest of him, well only since the night before in reality. She giggled as she moved her legs until one was wrapped across his legs, everything had changed last night, although the erection that was currently nudging at her thigh had nothing to do with last night, it was a direct result of the way she was sprawled all over him.

"Hey"

"Did you sleep okay?"

"Nah, not used to sleeping in the same bed as someone what fidgets the way you do, am I?"

"Glad to hear it, I hope you're not used to sleeping in the same bed with anyone, fidget or not" He rolled her onto her back and then leaned over, supporting himself on his forearms as he looked into the eyes that he kept telling her made her look like Bambi "And I do not fidget"

"Yeah you do, you always fidget in bed, so I'm pretty sure it were you and not me" She laughed as she looked up into the softness of his brown eyes "We're not gonna say anything to anyone about this, are we? I mean, I sort of think we should, you know, keep it to ourselves for a bit"

He could hear the insecurity in her voice as she asked, so that he knew just what it had cost her to say anything, and for a moment he was absolutely furious with himself. It hadn't occurred to him that she would have doubts about him, about them, about what was between them, and he knew that it should have done.

"I don't want to keep it to myself, Moll, I want to tell everyone who might be even the slightest little bit interested in us and then I want to tell everyone who doesn't give a shit as well"

"I dunno, Charles, I'm not sure that it's a good idea" He'd meant to make her happy but instead he could feel the tension building as she stopped smiling, shook her head, then spoke "If we tell people, then all that gold-digger shit is gonna start up again, you know that don't you? And I don't know if I can do all that again"

-OG-

' _ **Then It's The End Of My World For Me'**_

 _ **Molly's Story**_

"But why?"

"I dunno, mum, how the fuck would I know? He was fine yesterday, at least I think he was, he never said a bleeding word so he must of just changed his mind unless he's lying in some ditch somewhere without his fucking phone"

"If I get a hold of him he'll wish he was bleeding well lying in a ditch somewhere" Nan was almost purple with outrage "Either that or dead ….. and we can get that sorted 'n all"

"Nan ….. " Molly didn't know what to say, her instinct was, as always, to leap in and defend him but maybe not this time.

"Hey, will we still have to pay for all of this do you reckon? Got a good mind to go and find them and tell them they owe us for it. I don't see why them greedy buggers should have the lunch that we paid for, they looked like they could well afford to buy their own" Nan was muttering on as Molly shrugged, dry-eyed although she wanted to scream at her Nan and the rest of her family who were all standing around pulling faces at each other to just shut the fuck up because she didn't care about the bloody lunch, in case they hadn't noticed he'd said he couldn't go through with it as though it was a visit to the sodding dentist or some'ing and anyhow who was this 'we' and 'us' she kept on about? Last time she'd checked it was her what was paying for all of it.

Her and her dad had turned up only a little bit late cos that were the tradition apparently and had then had to hang about for ages in the wedding car cos the best man had come out and told them that they was missing one vital accessory, the bloody groom. A few, actually a few hundred, calls later to Paul's mobile and she'd still got no answer and his bloody mum and dad had then done a disappearing act and fucked off as well. Finally he'd sent her a text saying he couldn't go through with it and he was sorry. Sorry? Not half as sorry as Molly was. An hour after she was supposed to have become Mrs Paul Walker and to have started her happy ever after she was sitting with Bella, who was still wearing her bridesmaid dress, on the couch in their parent's front room wondering what the fuck to do next, whether to start screaming now or whether to wait till she got home to her own place.

She'd known from the start that she would be paying for it, after all she was the one who'd opened her gob to Paul's snotty cow of a mother when the old bag had gone into patronising mode and said about not wanting to do things on the cheap and had said as how her and Paul's dad would chip in and pay for it cos she could see that Belinda and Dave couldn't possibly afford it. Molly was the one who'd said that her mum and dad were going to fund the whole sodding thing because that's what parents do, but the only problem was that mum and dad hadn't got two ha'pennies to call their own any more than she had, and Nan had said not to look at her cos her pension wouldn't run to it either. Molly's wages only just covered her rent and the essentials ….. they bloody definitely didn't run to silk dresses and imported flowers and cakes that cost the same as the deposit on a small house somewhere and table arrangements and god only knows what else, and that was before you even got to the actual food.

His mum and dad were paying for the booze cos it was apparently traditional for the groom's parents to pay for the champagne 'n the wine 'n that, so thank fuck for small mercies, although the booze wouldn't have been so bad, at least they could have taken it back to east Ham with them and necked it which was more than they could do with the sodding 'finger' buffet for hundreds of his friends and family, a buffet which she'd paid for.

She'd been going to have all the things that her mum had never had, not the wedding cos she really wasn't thinking about that, but a decent home somewhere where debt collectors and bailiffs had never even heard of them, let alone been regular visitors at the door where one of the Dawes clan would open it and lie, would pretend that they were honestly gonna pay up next week, without fail, and the debt collectors would pretend to believe them, knowing full well that they'd be back the following week. She'd been going to have a nice house with a nice garden in a nice place with kids that looked like they came out of the Boden catalogue, they'd even started to house hunt looking at places to rent, and Paul had said that they'd look at buying later on when they got back from Spain, and they were going to have holidays every year somewhere nice, if not Spain then in a nice hotel somewhere not a couple of days in a caravan in Clacton, and Paul?

Paul was her passport to that life and it wasn't that she didn't love him, she did, she was pretty sure about that, but it was just that ….. well … he was an army officer with a snotty family and a whole load of snotty friends who all seemed to have even more snotty wives and girlfriends. Still, it was him she loved and him she was marrying, not his friends and certainly not his family, which was just as well because Molly's inclination whenever she spent any time with his mother was this over-riding urge to punch her straight in her gob … . She'd never realised that love was this hard, or this exhausting either, but her Nan and her Mum had kept on telling her that it was never like the love songs, that you always had to work hard at it, and now, on top of all that, there was this little question of how she was going to pay for all of it …. .

Even maxing out her credit cards and maybe getting another one wouldn't go anywhere near paying for all the stuff that his mum thought was essential and while shifts in the local "open all hours" mini-mart/dump didn't actually fulfil any of her lifetime ambitions, in fact it probably wasn't the answer to anyone's prayers unless they were desperate, but those shifts were a simple means to an end. What was also bloody convenient was Paul's deployment to Afghanistan. Okay, so she didn't much like the fact that he was out there and it was dangerous, but there was this great big silver lining in that he wouldn't know what she was doing when she wasn't working at her proper job, so it was all a bit of a lifeline what with one thing and another.

All her life she'd had a craving for the sort of security that being married to him would provide for her, security that he took for granted, because money, or rather the lack of it, hadn't ruled his family life like it had hers. His family had a holiday home in Spain, they lived in a big house in Dulwich in south London, they had a cleaner and Paul drove a Porsche whereas her Dad had a very unhealthy relationship with the stuff. He was the eternal optimist about which of his dodgy scams would produce the next windfall, then, wherever it came from, and it wasn't a good idea to ask, it always ended up the same way, being pissed up the wall of the local pub.

-OG-

Standing on the check-out watching a somewhat "cheerful" customer loiter around by the 'Wines and Spirits' shelf, which they were supposed to police in order to stop the local piss artists doing a bit of self-service, Molly was listening to Lecture number fifty from her workmate and new 'surrogate mother' about what she should be saying to Paul's mum.

"Tell her it's none of her bleeding business what people get to eat, that it's the bride's side what decides that" She chuckled "You could probably get a discount on a job lot of them party platter things from here"

"Yeah right, I can see her face now, hundreds of sausage rolls with not a lot of sausage in 'em, and them disgusting soggy mini pizza things" Molly giggled but didn't take her eyes off the drunk who was waiting for their attention to be diverted elsewhere before he did his "shopping". Having a drink-dependent father had made her acutely aware of the deviousness of people like him so that she could carry on a conversation at the same time as watching him like a hawk, any shortages in the alcohol stock would be deducted from pay packets at the end of the week.

"Yeah good point, but it don't have to be, what did you say she wanted, scallops, scollops? whatever they are, and chorizo, does it?" Betty chuckled again as they both watched the drunk stumble his way towards where they were standing on the check-out and put a single packet of crisps down on the counter together with a handful of loose change.

"Loyalty card?" Molly looked at his face and knew that if they searched him, or got the police in to do it, they'd find a bottle of something hidden on him somewhere, then decided that she didn't fancy rooting around in his pockets or, heaven forbid, down his pants and trouser legs and to let him get away with it, she suddenly felt a little bit sorry for him "I'll tell you what, you go and tell her for me and I'll hold your coat while you do it"

"No problem" They both giggled maliciously, although Betty had never met Paul's mother she'd heard enough about her to be convinced that they wouldn't like one another "You know he's got something, don't you?" She nodded towards the retreating back of their 'customer' "We must be going soft in our old age"

"Yeah, I know, but I couldn't be arsed"

"No, me neither, poor old sod"

Saying good-bye to all her friends and colleagues at the mini-mart was far harder than she could ever have imagined, and saying good-bye to some of the regular customers was equally hard, especially the pensioners who came in for a small loaf or something but really for a bit of a chat. She was going to miss them all dreadfully, well, apart from the ones who talked on their mobiles the whole time she was serving them, the one's that never said please or thank you and just pointed at things like the chewing gum that they wanted from behind the counter while they carried on with their conversation on their phone. She was often tempted to point back, but to use just one vertical finger.

Paul was due home in a couple of days and there were only a few weeks left till the wedding so that she needed to have a bit of a rest beforehand, otherwise she was going to look at least two hundred in the photos. She had three maxed out credit cards and was up to the top of her overdraft limit, hadn't had a day off for months and had been working shifts, including nights, and then working on the check-out every spare hour there was and it had taken its toll on her so that she didn't dare sit down anywhere or she'd drop off almost immediately and EasyJet would probably count the bags under her eyes as excess baggage when they got on their honeymoon flight to his parents' place in Spain.

-OG-

Molly had come under huge pressure to be part of the party. Most of her mates had done their level best to bully, badger and brow-beat her into going with them to the club because her first instinct had been, as usual, to shake her head and say thanks anyway but she didn't think so.

"I'm not ready, and anyhow I've got nothin' to wear"

"Course you have" Sally started routing through the pile of clothes that Molly had discarded and dumped on the bed one by one as being too tight, too loose, too short, too long, too boring, too tarty, too just 'not what she wanted to ever wear again'.

"Here" Sally poured her a second glass of wine as Molly looked at her glass which for some completely unfathomable reason seemed to be empty, although she couldn't remember drinking anything from it, well certainly not emptying it "Get that down you and stop being such a miserable cow, you'll feel a hell of a lot better after you've had that, take my word for it" Sally picked up the glass and pushed it towards her urging her to take it "You need to get out, Molls, it's time. You can't just sit here feeling sorry for yourself for the rest of your bloody life, can you?"

-OG-

 _ **A/N: Hey, I'm back, well, that's the thing with being an addict isn't it? I probably won't be able to do daily updates on this because it's not even properly written yet, and I have this mini canine terrorist who needs long walks, but I will do my very best to update every couple of days or so, well, as quickly as I can.**_

 _ **Please review for me, it is always such a motivation to get on when you do … Hope you enjoy the journey …. Oh and thanks a bunch to the late, great Cilla.**_


	2. Chapter 2

"I'm not"

Molly felt the familiar sting of self-pity at Sally's words, it was alright for everyone else to keep telling her what to do and how to feel and keep on at her to get over it but they didn't know how it felt, not really. They didn't know how it made you feel to have someone, someone you sort of cared about, dump your heart on the stone steps outside of the church and then walk all over it on their way off to get on with their life, and then just a text to say 'sorry', not even a phone call. Mind you, she knew now that he was a bleeding coward otherwise he'd have told her earlier that he didn't want to go through with it. She also knew only too well that her friends and family were all getting fed up now and were bored with her still feeling and acting the way she was after all this time, and she knew exactly how they felt cos she felt the same way about herself, but she wasn't ready to face the world again, not just yet, going to work was about all she could cope with, she was sure she would know when she was ready.

Eventually she'd given in because she could see that it was the only way to get everyone off of her back and once she'd agreed to give it a go she made this little vow to herself that she would prove to anyone and everyone that she was back to normal, she would show everyone just how much she could enjoy herself, that she was back to her very best and then perhaps, just maybe, they'd all leave her alone.

"Okay, okay, if I say I'll come with you, will you leave me the fuck alone after? Just remember that I don't want to go, that I'm only going to shut you up and not for any other reason"

"Try" Sally grimaced, she hadn't meant to sound quite as sharp as she had, so that she pinned a weak smile to her face before turning back to face Molly and nodded in the direction of the empty glass that Molly was still holding "Look, a couple more of those and you'll have a ball, you won't bloody care anymore, I promise"

-OG-

Much as she hated to admit that Sally was right, an hour and a half into their visit to the club, two more glasses of wine and a couple of large Vodka and coke later and Molly was having a great time. She was absolutely flying and couldn't think for the life of her why she'd been so reluctant to join this lot for an evening out, so much so that it had suddenly become vital that she explain loudly and at great length to anyone who'd listen, and to a lot of people who didn't want to because they couldn't give a shit, just how much she regretted all the times she'd said 'no thanks' in the past few weeks and months. The advent of the crowd of Sally's male workmates enhanced the group no end as far as Molly was concerned so that she had no hesitation whatsoever in giving up her seat to sit on someone's lap and to giggle as he whispered nonsense in her ear, at least she thought it was nonsense, cos she couldn't understand a single word he was saying to her.

-OG-

 _ **For Me They Shine Within Your Eyes**_

 _ **Charles' Story**_

This was the first time he'd allowed himself to be persuaded out for the evening since his latest return from Afghanistan and he was not enjoying any of it, not one tiny little bit. He wasn't in the slightest bit drunk and he didn't actually want to be because too much alcohol wouldn't help to fill the void, the emptiness would still be there when he sobered up, and anyway he didn't think there was enough alcohol in the world to fill his particular feeling of hollow misery. It was the first time he'd come back to the U.K. after she'd walked out on him, his wife of six years had pissed off with someone else, so that he'd come back to an echoingly empty house, to a cold and empty bed, and all in all to the lonely empty space where his life had once been.

He was tired, he wasn't sleeping well, most days he was awake before dawn after a restless dream-filled night reliving the horror and anger that he felt at his failure to keep Geraint Smith safe, seeing over and over the moment when that sniper's bullet had found it's mark. Everyone kept telling him that it wasn't his fault, that it had just been one of those things that happen in war and he knew they were right, logically, but that didn't stop him pounding the streets before dawn day after day, trying to find some inner peace.

He noticed her the minute he'd walked into the place, well it was impossible to miss her and her crowd of noisy mates who were all obviously enjoying some sort of very raucous hen party judging by the shrieks of laughter that were coming from their table on the far side of the club and the fact that they were all thoroughly pissed was obvious even from a distance. Charles was actually a bit surprised at the way she was behaving because she was, in fact, one of the loudest of the lot and while having a good time was one thing, this looked to him to be way over the top. He raised his eyebrows to himself as he tried to imagine just what her mother-in-law would make of her at that moment, or her husband for that matter. Paul wasn't known for his tolerance and _laisser faire_ attitude towards 'laddish' behaviour amongst the girls, in fact he was scathing about girls who behaved like that, not that it was commonplace amongst their acquaintances but some of their fellow officers and some female squaddies were a different kettle of fish entirely.

-OG-

Charles couldn't help watching her as she got off Mr. Whoever's lap and made her very unsteady way across the small dance floor of the club, a dance floor which, at this hour of the evening was empty of exhibitionists or people who'd had enough to drink to want to make fools of themselves dancing in front of total strangers. He'd been wrong about it being a hen party, they'd been joined by this group of young blokes, some of whom looked barely old enough to be out this late at night, so that his disapproval of the way she was acting had, if anything, re-doubled, especially as she had perched herself on someone's lap and had been throwing her head back and laughing at whatever it was he'd been saying to her. Charles couldn't stop speculating as to whether he was looking at the way Rebecca had behaved while he was away in Afghan. He found it hard to imagine it, but he didn't know for certain which meant that he didn't know if that was how she'd met the bloke she'd left him for.

Being filled with an irrational anger was making him twitchy with a need to 'do' something. Alright he didn't know Paul very well and he certainly didn't know her, Paul's wife, he couldn't even remember her name, but he knew Paul's mother well because she was an old friend of his own mother, they'd been at school together and although that was years ago now they'd kept in touch, and Paul had been at Sandhurst at the same time as him. While he and Paul hadn't actually ever been what you might call friends, they really didn't have that much in common, but they were fellow officers with friends in common. He wasn't sure now whether Rebecca had been friends with the girl that was over there making such an exhibition of herself, he didn't think so, but he didn't want to stand by and say nothing while a fellow officer suffered in the same way as he had when he'd found out what had gone on in his absence.

"Paul busy tonight then, not with you?"

He had accidentally on purpose bumped into her near the lavatories because he'd assumed that that was where she'd been heading when he'd seen her weave her way across the room, so that he'd almost laid in wait while pretending to read the cocktail menu displayed on a board near the bar. As far as he could remember he'd only met her a couple of times before, both times when he'd been out somewhere with Rebecca and had come across the other couple, and then only really in passing so that he couldn't remember ever actually speaking to her before and just for a moment he did wonder whether she would know who the bloody hell he was. She was a lot smaller than he remembered, mind you it would appear that she'd lost her shoes somewhere so that she was barefoot, another thing that made him want to shudder with distaste bearing in mind the sticky grubbiness of the floor.

"Nah, don't think so, can't see him anywhere, can you?"

She pretended to be peering around the club as if she might spot Paul hiding somewhere then looked up at him with eyes that were barely focussing. He'd certainly never noticed her eyes before, he was sure he would have remembered if he had because they were huge and a greenish grey colour that reminded him of something or someone, although for the life of him he couldn't think what or who. They were also very red-rimmed as though she'd been rubbing them.

"Where is he tonight, on duty? He's not deployed is he? Not back in Afghan?"

"You know what?" She shrugged "Whoever you are, I'm glad you asked, cos you've just reminded me ….. I thought I'd lost some'ing, that there was some'ing missing" She looked around again then pretended to check under the nearest table so that he realised just how drunk she was "Shit, I'd better go and check the car park, make sure I didn't leave him out there"

She walked off without giving him another look or another chance to speak and he would have dearly loved to follow her, to grab hold of her and pull her round to face him, and then to have given her the sort of hell she deserved for the way she was behaving. He couldn't of course, well, not unless he wanted to get arrested for assaulting some silly little tart in a nightclub, which he didn't, and because, at the end of the day, it was none of his fucking business after all.

He saw her go back to her table and return to her perch on Mr Whoever's lap, or it might have been a different Mr Whoever, he had no way of knowing and he didn't much care, all he cared about was that he had to control his impulse to march over there and sort them out before he actually started venting the huge ball of anger that was sitting uncomfortably in his chest onto two people who were, in effect, strangers.

"My round I think"

He did his best to get himself under control and to stop watching her as he took orders for another round of drinks and revised his earlier decision to stay sober, maybe getting pissed was a good idea after all. But, and it didn't actually seem to matter how much he drank, he stayed infuriatingly sober at the same time as staying totally conscious of every move Paul's wife was making, what she was getting up to and with who, so that he was heartily relieved when the group she was with started to look as if they were getting ready to leave.

"Byeee" She waggled her fingers at him as she passed his table so that all her friends turned to look at him and followed suit with a chorus of 'Byeeee'. She didn't know him or even know who he was, except that he was obviously a friend of twat face and was very good-looking, but she was completely trollied so it suddenly seemed vital to put him straight, and to do so in no uncertain terms, so she turned back and weaved her way to his table.

"Just so as you know whoever the fuck you are, twat face is not with me tonight cos I haven't seen him or spoke to him for, oh, I dunno now, do I? Oh, yeah I do, bleeding forever, and if I ever do hear from him again, it'll be too fucking soon, okay?"

"I beg your pardon? … Look, I'm sorry …"

"Don't bother, I don't know who the fuck you, Oh yeah I said that didn't I? But tell you what, you go and tell someone who gives a shit, okay?"

A slight colour on his cheekbones was the only thing that betrayed the way he felt as he pasted his sternest expression on his face and nodded at her, and then watched, shaking his head as she stumbled her way to the exit to catch up with the rest of them amid a gale of raucous laughter.

"Friend of yours, Charles?" Ryan nodded his head in her direction "You really are a sly old bugger sometimes aren't you?"

"Oi, less of the old, if you don't mind" Charles did his best to laugh and to sound as much like his old self as he could manage "Anyway that not's some random girl, I think, no I thought, that she was Paul's wife, Christ, I can't remember her bloody name now for the life of me"

"Paul?"

"Yep, Paul Walker, I thought that she was his wife, although I'm not sure now"

"Paul Walker's not married"

"Yes he is, or at least I thought he was, are you sure?"

"Yes, I'm absolutely sure, he was going to marry some girl worked in a supermarket somewhere, a while ago now, but he caught her out, said she was a gold-digger or something, not that I knew he had any money, anyway he broke it off didn't he? That might be her, well, could have been I suppose"

"He called it off the night before" Ryan sniggered "No, he didn't, he stood her up didn't he? Or dumped her on the morning of the wedding or something like that, I can't quite remember, bloody prat that he is, but there was this _big_ fuss at the time and then he was moaning all the time, said it had cost him a fucking fortune to get rid. I'm surprised you didn't hear, everyone was talking about it at the time, I would have thought Rebecca would have mentioned it, it was …. "His voice tailed away and he ground to a complete halt as he suddenly became aware of the frozen faces of his listeners at his drunken lack of tact "Shit, sorry"

"Was that her? I do remember that she was a pretty little thing, I remember thinking at the time that I could see what old Walker saw in her"

There was a hasty attempt to change the subject back to Paul Walker and away from Rebecca.

"Wouldn't know, don't think I ever met her, but he said that it was just one of those things that had got a bit out of hand, that he'd never meant for it to go as far as it did, well certainly not as far as him having to do a runner on his wedding day, cost him a fortune"

"Serves him right, but then that's Walker for you, isn't it? He always was a complete dick lead dickhead"

Shit, shit, SHIT, Charles listened with mounting horror to the tone of the discussion and to the gale of laughter that greeted this succinct assessment of Paul Walker's character and his relationship with the girl who'd just left, if it was her and he thought that it probably was, because she hadn't said "Who the hell is Paul?"

He wondered, and not for the first time, just who they thought they were to be so fucking patronising and superior, they were talking about someone who'd been treated very badly by one of their own for fuck sake, and he couldn't see what was so fucking hilarious about that.

"She's got lovely eyes" He was talking to himself more than to them, and as he said it Charles recalled the film he'd watched with Sam, Bambi ….. that's who she reminded him of, she'd got eyes like bloody Bambi and she'd looked at him for all the world as though he'd just beaten her mother to death.

-OG-

 _ **A/N: Thank you for the feedback and support, please keep it coming it really keeps me motivated, and for my welcome back. Every time I tell myself that I'm going to take a bit of a break I find myself drawn back to the laptop and to my parallel universe – well a girl can dream, although girl may well be pushing it a bit.**_

 _ **Chap. 3 is still a 'work in progress' so is likely to take a couple more days to finish, but it is fairly pivotal so I will do my best to get it out asap.**_


	3. Chapter 3

_**You're Every Breath I Take**_

"Not back with us then?"

"Nope, they've started weaning him so, maybe tomorrow?"

"He'll be fine, me Nan always says the devil looks after his own"

"You're all heart you, aren't you?"

"You noticed"

Charles could feel hands touching him and moving him gently and he could hear voices and someone laughing a short quiet laugh from a very long way away almost as if people were talking about him from the bottom of some weirdly echoing swimming pool somewhere. He was sure he recognised one of the voices although he didn't know where from or who it was, he just knew he'd heard the voice before somewhere just like he knew they were talking about him but couldn't work out what they were saying. He wished more than anything that they would just stop, would shut up because it was making him feel very peculiar and disorientated. No matter how hard he tried he couldn't open his eyes even though he knew he was awake, but his eyes obviously didn't believe him and his whole body was incredibly heavy as though both his arms and his legs weighed a ton so it was impossible for him to move.

He had no idea where he was or how long he'd been there but he did know he was ill because he'd been having horribly vivid dreams, the sort of dreams you get when you've got the flu or something, so that he'd heard Rebecca's voice which in itself was impossible. Rebecca was long gone from his life, in fact their divorce had been final before he'd come on this tour and what the hell would Rebecca be doing here anyway? The same went for his mother, why would she be on some FOB in Afghan? But he could have sworn that he'd heard her voice as well.

There had been times when he'd had this white hot pain, pain that meant that he couldn't even breathe properly, pain that was far, far worse than anything he could ever remember having before, bouts of agony in his stomach and his leg, until someone said something from a long way away, and then someone else did something, he didn't know what or care who, because then there was this glorious dark oblivion where the pain gave way and the dreams disappeared.

-OG-

"Hullo Charles, no, don't try to move just keep nice and still and you'll be fine in a moment"

The very heavily accented man's voice was the first thing he heard when someone put a hand on his shoulder to stop him from obeying his first instinct which was to sit up. It was broad daylight when he finally managed to force his eyelids open enough to see anything at all and he wanted to look around and to move his head from side to side so that he could see where he was, but he was flat on his back in bed in a small light, bright room surrounded by faces he didn't recognise peering down at him and there were machines beeping with coloured numbers and moving lines on screens and tubes and wires and clips on just about every bit of him as far as he could tell, even tubes up his nose which were stuck to his face with something. Bastion? Was this Bastion? Was he in hospital at Bastion? Why? What the fuck had happened? There were a million questions he needed answers to but he hadn't got the energy to start asking as his eyelids began to droop closed again, he was just totally exhausted.

"Hello darling"

When he woke again his mother was sitting next to his bed holding his hand so that he was pretty sure he wasn't in hospital at Bastion after all. No matter how ill he was or how long he'd been there, there was no way the army would have arranged for his mother to come out from home to be with him.

"Hello, what are you doing here Mum? And where the fuck is here anyway?"

His mouth was very dry and his voice sounded incredibly croaky and strange even to him, so much so that he wasn't sure if she'd understood what he'd said as he saw her eyes well up with tears and she patted his hand.

"Don't swear, darling, you know I don't like it"

Her admonishment was curiously comforting because it was a taste of the normality which was missing at that moment. Apparently here was the MDHU at Frimley Park Hospital because as far as his mother had been told, he'd been leading a mission somewhere in Afghan and it had gone very badly wrong so that he'd been shot then re-patriated fourteen day ago, but he couldn't remember any of it, none of it at all, a great big chunk of his memory was missing which was a frightening sensation in itself. He'd been kept sedated to stop him thrashing about because things had been a bit tricky with his stomach wound, they'd been pretty pessimistic about his long-term prospects apparently. She kept on reassuring him that he'd been the only casualty, that no-one else had been injured, well, apart from one of the men getting a very minor flesh wound from a ricochet bullet, and that he had to stop worrying about anything else and concentrate on getting better himself.

He hadn't been dreaming when he'd thought he could hear Rebecca, she was apparently still on his records as NOK because he hadn't got around to changing it, he'd been putting it off because it made everything feel so bloody final, but it meant that she'd been the first person to be notified that he was in trouble and on his way home. Apparently she'd spent hours sitting by his bedside while it was touch and go, so much so that his mother was wondering if there was a chance that they might get back together.

"I don't know, I don't think … well" He paused "I don't know, Mum, can't think about that right now, was Sam here as well? I don't remember hearing him"

"No, it's not a suitable place for a little boy"

"No, suppose not, I'd love to see him though"

"Of course, now you're back with us, just give it a couple of days till you're more yourself, we don't want to worry him, do we?" She patted his hand again trying to be as reassuring as she could, she still thought he looked terrible, but everyone kept telling her that he was on the mend so she was trying very hard to believe them. Her unrelenting paralysing fear had meant that she hadn't eaten or slept properly since that first phone call from Rebecca.

He didn't know whether this sudden desire to consider re-kindling his old life with Rebecca was real or not or whether it was because the thought of going back to 'normal' was so comforting that it made it seem an attractive option, if option it was, but at that moment he was far too tired to think it through, he needed to sleep.

-OG-

"Hello, awake I see, you okay?"

When he woke again he found his mother had vanished and that the lights were all on, so it was obviously night and there was some girl in scrubs checking his tubes and drains then writing on the chart which was sitting on a table where he couldn't get at it even if he could sit up properly, which he couldn't.

"Are you thirsty, would you like some lemonade?"

"I'd love some" His voice was still the same croaky rasp it had been when he'd been talking to his mother or trying to.

"Just little sips, or you'll throw up and if you bust them stitches I'll be in real trouble"

"Okay" It was the voice that he'd thought he'd recognised the evening before when he couldn't quite wake up. She slid her arm under his head and held it so that he could take sips from a straw bent into a beaker and even those tiny sips tasted like some kind of nectar "Thank you, do I know you, have we met before somewhere?"

"Nah, not really, hello Captain James, I'm Molly and I'm a student, I'm one of the people that's been looking after you when you was out of it" she smiled and hesitated "You probably recognise me from then even if it felt like you was dreaming at the time" She paused "That'd be the morphine, bloody magic if you've got a pain, but it does make you feel, you know, a bit weird sometimes, a bit out of it and you was having quite a lot of it" She laughed then relented slightly at the frown on his face as he struggled with his memory "And, well, actually we might of met once before, a long time ago"

Molly had recognised him the minute he'd been admitted, with looks like his he was hard to forget and it had taken her a very long time to put the memory of that particular evening out of her head, especially as she'd ended up wishing she was dead because she'd spent the night puking for England and had had the worst hangover in the world next day. She'd decided not to say anything to anyone about maybe recognising him, after all it wasn't as though she _knew_ him and there was a good chance he wouldn't know her from Adam. He belonged to the past, to a part of her life that she'd done her best to forget and she had no wish now to re-live the humiliation.

"Remind me"

"Nah, not important, now can I get you anything before I go, are you comfortable?"

She smiled to show she wasn't being shitty or trying to get away from him or anything, although in reality that was exactly what she was trying to do, she didn't want to talk to him in case his memory kicked in, but it was her smile that triggered the recognition. Okay she looked very different with all that long hair tied neatly back in a plait thing on the back of her head and she was wearing green scrubs, the shapeless things that all the medical staff wore, and she was stone cold sober, but surely it was the same girl unless there was someone else around with an identical smile and eyes that had haunted him for weeks, the girl with the Bambi eyes …. he was bloody sure it was her.

"I've got a feeling that I owe you an apology for something, but I …." There was a long pause as he struggled to remember "I thought you worked in a supermarket"

Shit, he'd obviously got a good memory and that's what she'd been afraid of, that he would remember her "Did you? Oh bugger, I mean bother, that's me busted then, innit? Well … I moonlight as a nurse sometimes" She caught sight of his face and wondered if he'd taken her seriously, her sense of humour was always getting her into hot water and he didn't know her "Nah, look don't worry about it, I did moonlight in a supermarket for a bit when I needed a lot of money" She smiled, not wanting to explain any further than that but hoping he wouldn't think she'd meant she needed it for drugs or something "Now, are you comfortable, do you need anything?"

She'd dealt with his catheter and tubes and had done his dressings and had done it all without any reaction at all, she'd just kept completely cool and calm and professional, detached somehow, but that didn't stop him feeling deeply uncomfortable. He ignored her question about whether or not he wanted anything, he would only be comfortable again when he was allowed to sit up properly, not just be propped up a bit, and was allowed to get up and use the loo and have a shower, when he could get rid of all the tubes and monitors and could eat a proper meal, none of which was going to happen in the next few minutes or hours.

After she left he started dredging his memory trying to recall details of that long ago evening in a nightclub, it was more than a year ago now. He remembered having difficulty sleeping afterwards which had left him edgy and dissatisfied with himself, he'd hated the emptiness of the house but what was worse was that he'd hated his gut feeling that he'd behaved as badly as any of the rest of them.

He would have loved to have gone and found her to tell her he was sorry for what he'd said and for the way he'd acted, that it was him not her, but he hadn't even known her name, which made it bloody difficult to say the least, he couldn't just walk into every supermarket he could find and ask if there was a girl working there who was small and pretty with long dark hair and eyes like Bambi. The only way would be to ask Paul Walker which wasn't going to happen, or to ask his mum to pump Paul's mother for information, and that wasn't going to happen either.

After a while he'd got involved with the horrible realities of getting a divorce, of dividing their lives and making arrangements for Sam so that the memories of the encounter in the nightclub had faded and didn't matter anymore. Eventually of course there was the blessed relief of another deployment to Afghan to take all his concentration, so that his attention was diverted away from the shit that was his home life.

-OG-

"Jesus, ouch, stop it, stop"

"What, what's the matter?" She stopped stripping off his limp and sweaty hospital gown, something which had made her grimace slightly at the crumpled and smelly state of it, and looked at him, concern written all over her face as she thought for a moment that she'd hurt him.

"Your hands are bloody freezing, they're like little blocks of ice"

"Oh for f… sorry, sorry, I'll warm them up, see? Okay?" She rubbed her hands together in front of him showing that she was doing her best to warm them up while biting her bottom lip in a vain attempt to control her urge to giggle "It's cold this morning"

"What are you going to do anyway?"

"I'm gonna give you a nice sponge down, your face and your hands 'n that, cos it'll make you feel so much better and then you'll be able to go back to sleep till breakfast, so just relax and close your eyes while I give you a bit of a wash and then we'll get you some clean stuff, 'n change your bed and get you all settled"

"No, thanks very much but I'm fine, honestly there's no need to bother, I'm fine as I am and I'm not that tired so I'll just listen to the radio or something, so thanks anyway"

He was suddenly convinced that her 'nice bit of a wash' was not going to stop at his face and hands as Molly stifled her urge to giggle at him, she knew exactly what was worrying him, the same thing that worried 99% of young male patients when they needed her to give them a bed bath, and it obviously hadn't occurred to him that she'd been washing him for the last couple of weeks when he'd been none the wiser.

"Come on, I need to do your back as well, you don't want to get pressure sores do you?"

"I'm not sure I know what they are but I'm bloody sure I don't want them"

"Course not, now can you roll over onto your side or do you want me to help you?"

" _That_ is not my back"

"It is on this ward, that's what we call it here, your back"

"When do you think I'll be able to get up?" He knew she wouldn't be able to tell him but he was desperately trying to distract himself from the feel of her hands on his backside.

"I wouldn't try it just yet if I was you, you'll feel like you've necked a couple of bottles of Vodka" She was tempted to tell him what she was about to do next, it would, after all, be sweet revenge for the nightclub, but she couldn't, it wouldn't be fair because he couldn't just get up and leave "I can get your shaver if you want, so you can get rid of that scruffy beard if it's itchy" Molly was doing her best to distract him by talking about something totally unrelated to what she was actually doing "Or I can do it for you, although I'm better with a proper razor, you know, with water 'n that"

"I think I'll pass if you don't mind" She glanced at his face as he spoke, there was a hint of pink on his cheekbones and his eyes were tightly shut.

"Why? I've never cut off anyone's ear, well not up till now anyhow" She giggled "Had lots of practice on legs 'n that, not cutting them off, I don't mean that, but shaving them"

"Lovely, very comforting"

-OG-


	4. Chapter 4

_**With your Hand Resting in Mine**_

Seeing and spending time with Sam had been something he wouldn't have missed for the world, he hadn't seen him for more than six months and he looked as if he'd grown several inches and seemed light years older than the last time Charles had seen him, he simply wasn't a baby any more. No, it hadn't been Sam that had made the afternoon difficult, it had been that way because of Rebecca and although neither of them had said anything about it at all, he'd felt that he needed to weigh up every word he said in case he misled her and that had been thoroughly exhausting so it was a relief when the visit finally came to an end. The more he'd thought about her and their shared history, the more convinced he'd got that getting back together wasn't going to be an answer to anything, except maybe making his poor mum ecstatic. But his mother was going to be disappointed.

Yes, it would be the easy option, Sam would love it and it certainly looked as though Rebecca would be prepared to give things another go, well, if his mother was right anyway, but nothing had really changed. He was still married to the army, even though his immediate future was far from assured, but all being well he would still be living his life according to army regulations, he would still be at his absolute happiest living out of a Bergen, if he was honest it was all he'd ever wanted and she would still end up feeling neglected and lonely, and would then look for the same solution as she had last time, and he didn't think he could blame her.

The other complication was the increasing amount of time he spent thinking about someone else. In his heart he was slightly afraid that the way he felt wasn't real, that this admiration, liking, he didn't know how best to describe the way he felt about her, was some sort of cliché, but even as he lay thinking about the difficult conversation he was going to have to have with his mother, he was thinking about her, she was there in his head all the time, the girl with the Bambi eyes and the wicked sense of humour, and thinking about her, as always, brought a smile to his face.

His embarrassment had diminished as the days had gone on and he'd got more and more used to some of the procedures he had to endure and as the days went by and he was allowed to do more and more for himself, some of it with an acute sense of relief, he'd found himself looking forward more and more to her arrival in the evenings. Her presence cheered him enormously just by her being there, the girl who could make him laugh even when he was down in the dumps with boredom and frustration at what he saw as slow progress and when he was thoroughly fed up with the false grins and reassuringly encouraging words from others.

OG-

"I don't think that's very nice" Charles could hear her voice as she spoke to someone out of his sight and giggled, her hand on the door handle to his room. She'd opened the door slightly but hadn't come in yet or spoken to him "Me feelings are well hurt, I can't help it if I'm not bloody Mary Berry"

"Hello, had a nice weekend?" She came in with the trademark big smile on her face as if she was pleased to see him as she walked across and picked up his wrist to take his pulse "Did your wife come and bring your little boy?"

"Yup, she did thanks" His face broke into a smile that matched hers and pointed to the 'I love Daddy' message that Sam had written up the inside of his arm "His artwork"

"That's lovely" she smiled "Actually, thought it might be him wrote it, didn't think it was your wife"

"She's not my wife anymore, Molly, we're divorced, we have been for a long time" Suddenly it seemed very important that she knew what the situation was with Rebecca.

"Whatever" Molly didn't quite meet his eyes because she didn't want him to see and perhaps recognise the small flare of relief and happiness that she felt that the blonde woman with the long legs and shiny glossy appearance wasn't actually married to him after all. They'd all been convinced that she was his wife when she'd been sitting by his bedside during the worst period of his doubtful prognosis, but getting too close to a male patient was the quickest way that she knew of if you wanted to get yourself chucked out and she had no intention of doing that.

"What about you, did you have a nice day off?"

He'd had found the last couple of days without seeing her at all very long, something that had underlined for him just how much he liked her, so that it was impossible for him to hide how pleased he was that she was back. He couldn't keep the smile off his face as he turned his head and looked up at the expression of intense concentration on her face as she stood very close to do her basic checks, and thought how incredibly pretty she was even wearing hospital scrubs and without make-up.

"Yeah, we did this baking thing, you know, a fund raiser cos we're trying to raise money for Children in Need, like a "Bake off" competition thing, then we're having this cake sale today, but I don't really think it's my thing" She was now giggling in earnest "It sort of started off badly cos I read the recipe a bit wrong, read teaspoon as tablespoon, well I didn't know did I? And it sort of went downhill from there, it's a lot harder than it bloody well looks" She was now laughing out loud "One of them lot out there just said that no-one in their right mind is gonna give good money for it cos it looks more like a fruity dog turd than a bleeding cake and that it were just as well it weren't chocolate"

"That's a bit harsh, I'm sure it can't be that bad" He put his head back and began to roar with laughter.

"Yeah, it is"

"Let's have a look then"

"No, I've got enough people taking the piss already"

She was still giggling as she looked at him from under her eyelashes and caught the way he was looking at her so that she blushed, feeling the tide of colour flooding her neck and starting to creep up to her cheeks.

"Molly….."

"Nah, don't …." She couldn't let him say anything "It's against the rules"

"Sorry" He grinned and did his best to try and change the subject "They're letting me get up tomorrow to have a shower, did you know?"

"What no more bed baths?"

"Nope" He grinned "I can't wait to be up and about, to get out of this bed" He raised his eyebrows "To get out of here, get back to normal"

"Oh thanks"

"You know I didn't mean it like that"

"I'll see you later, ring your bell if you want …. you know … if you need ….. anything"

-OG-

She'd had to get out of there as fast as her feet would carry her, the way his deep brown eyes were following her around had suddenly made her clumsy and self-conscious so that she was fumbling the simplest of tasks and her overwhelming urge to flirt, to laugh and joke with him, to lean across and touch him meant that she needed to get away, none of it was sensible behaviour in the circumstances. She knew, maybe from his tone of voice or from the expression on his face exactly what he'd been going to share with her and she couldn't let him because patients sometimes imagined that feelings were something they weren't, it gave them something else to think about when they were stuck in bed hour after hour, but those feelings disappeared as soon as they got back to their real lives, so why on earth was she imagining this was any different? Anyhow, nurses weren't supposed to think like that, they were supposed to be immune, but she was thinking about him far too much and she needed to stop and to stop dreading the inevitable day when he was discharged.

-OG-

"Hey, come on, it's a nightmare, you're okay, come on Charles, its Molly, come on wake up"

He could hear her speaking to him telling him over and over again that he was dreaming but he couldn't answer so that it felt like that day when he could hear them talking about him before he regained consciousness. It wasn't a nightmare, yes okay, it was a dream but it was a memory, a frame by frame film of the mission on that bridge in Afghan, the memory that had been missing. The dust, the smells, the farmer, the dead goat, Smurf waving his gun around, the shouting, his shouting, the pain in his leg and then the agony in his stomach, it was all there and then the black void. It had all returned with a vengeance, but in his sleep, it was exactly what had happened and he could remember every detail with complete clarity.

It had been way after midnight when it had started and at first they'd thought that something had gone wrong, that he was suffering some sort of complication, and that he was in pain, the same sort of pain that he'd had when he was first admitted. He was calling out and thrashing around so that Molly had rushed in and put the light on, then as she turned to check him she'd seen that he was pouring with sweat but that he was still fast asleep and that he could neither see nor hear her even though his eyes were wide open. Wherever he was in his sleep he was obviously in the throes of a very bad dream, a nightmare.

She put one hand on his wrist feeling his pulse as it raced under her finger tips and then, and strictly against all the rules, she put her other hand gently on his face and stroked his hair back from his sweat soaked forehead, murmuring all the time that he was okay, that he was safe and that he had to wake up and have a drink, that it was her and that it was a dream.

-OG-

"Can you stay for a bit?"

"Course"

The lights were on and he was sitting up sipping a drink, now wide awake but still feeling slightly disturbed and unsettled even after she'd wiped his face and hands and changed his sweat soaked top and bedding. He'd protested that he could manage to do all that for himself, well except for the bed but she'd ignored him and had carried on wiping his face with the warm damp cloth. He'd woken with a start to find her stroking his hair away from his forehead at which point she'd laughed guiltily and said she needed to stop in case someone came in to see how he was and whether he needed any meds but had carried on doing it anyway. He'd turned his head pressing towards the hand that was on his face and had tried his level best to smile to show her that he was alright, to wipe the worried expression off her face.

"Don't look so worried, I'm okay, you were right, it was just a dream"

"That's s'posed to be my job, telling patients not to worry, that they'll be okay"

"I thought we were friends, I mean we did already know each other before I got stuck in here as a patient, didn't we? Well, maybe knowing each other is a bit of an exaggeration, but we had met before"

"Yeah and that went fabulously well, didn't it?"

"Sorry"

"It were me that was pissed out me nut, not you" She looked at him with a slight grimace on her face as if she was asking him a question, her memories of that night were somewhat hazy to say the least "It were the first time I'd been out since my life went to shit, since twat-face" She paused "I sort of lost count and got a bit rat-arsed, then I dumped on you, so I don't know why you're saying sorry, should be me" She shrugged, still smiling at him "Mind, I bleeding paid for it after, I had a hangover for two whole days, had to come to work with a little bloke still beating the inside of me nut with his hammer"

"It wasn't you, it was me, I mean, I wasn't drunk but my life had gone to shit as well and I was taking it out on you, and I'm sorry"

"Was that cos of your wife?"

"Mainly" He ran his fingers through the curls on the back of his head, curls that were now much longer than a standard army length "I wanted to find you afterwards to say that I was sorry, but I didn't even know what your name was, just that you'd got eyes like Bambi and as far as I was told you worked in a supermarket somewhere, no-one even knew which one" He picked up her hand, twining his fingers through hers "It was a matter of luck bought me here, Lady Luck was smiling on me for a bloody change"

"Really? You absolutely sure about that? Don't seem that lucky to me to get yourself shot … and I haven't got eyes like Bambi"

"Yes you have, and don't argue with me I'm the patient, alright maybe I wasn't lucky to end up in here, but it was Lady Luck that bought us back together"

They smiled at each other still holding onto one another's hands, fingers entwined.

"Charles, I'm sorry, but I can hear them calling me cos we're quite busy, so you okay now? You really should get back off to sleep if you can"

"Go, go on, go, I'll be fine now …" He stroked the back of her knuckles before letting go of her hand "Come back later if you can, if you're not too busy"

"Don't worry, I will"

-OG-

"You will look after yourself won't you, you'll do as you're told 'n that?"

"Are you going to miss me?"

"Nah"

"That's what I thought" He looked at his mother who was standing waiting by the door with his bag in her hand, ready to set off for Bath "Mum, do you think you could you wait outside for a bit please? Would you mind? I just want to talk to Molly for a minute before we get off"

It was the day he'd begun to think would never arrive, especially during the dark days at the beginning but once he'd been allowed up and about and had begun physiotherapy, his progress had been rapid and now a part of him was dying to get outside into the fresh air and to get in the car and go home, but there was also a big part of him that was reluctant, that didn't want to go.

"Molly? As I'm not a patient anymore"He gave her a smug smirk "If I asked you if I can take you out for lunch, or even dinner, what would you say?"

"Dunno, try me and see"

"Miss Dawes, would you have dinner with me on your next day off? So that I can say thanks for making all this bearable"

"You don't have to say thanks to me I was just doing me job and where would we go, what with you in Bath and me here?"

"Bath, I'll buy you a train ticket and the house is more than big enough for you to stay over, or if you don't want to stay at my parents I can book you into a TraveLodge or something?"

"I can buy me own ticket thanks, God you're bossy, I think I liked you better when you was at my mercy in that bed" She giggled at the raised eyebrow and involuntary smirk that spread across his face "Stop it, you know what I mean"

He leaned forward without warning, cupped her chin in his hand then kissed her gently on the cheek.

"Oi, what are you doing? You trying to get me the sack or some'ing?"

"I'm just saying goodbye …..and thank you, I think you're fucking awesome"

"Thank you" She smiled then wrinkled her nose at him "And I will miss you …..a bit"

-OG-

 _ **A/N: Thank you for your feedback it keeps me going! I was trying to show that in successful relationships the so-called 'power balance' shifts backwards and forwards between the two people involved, that having someone 'in charge' all the time isn't always the best way, but I don't know if it's worked, I may be too close to it to see.**_

 _ **Part three – starting with Chapter 5 will show them moving on to the next phase and I hope it will be ready to go on Monday. Hop everyone has a nice weekend. I have to walk Lily now while it's not raining, she needs far more exercise than I do, but only if it's NOT raining, she doesn't DO rain..**_


	5. Chapter 5

_**So My Arms Reach Out to You For Love**_

"You look beautiful"

She'd walked through the restaurant towards him with a broad smile on her face as he got up from the table and moved towards her then leaned forward to kiss her on the cheek, smiling at the intense jolt of pleasure that had shot through him when she'd first walked in, she looked even prettier than he remembered. It had seemed like a very long ten days and there had been a little corner of his brain that had been a bit afraid that she wouldn't turn up.

"Bet you say that to all the girls"

"OnIy when it's true"

Molly grinned then kissed him on his cheek, for some reason she suddenly felt incredibly self-conscious and more than a little bit giggly as she looked at him, at how good looking he was in his pale blue shirt and dark blazer "You don't look too shabby yourself" She looked around and tucked her hair behind her ears before she spoke "Seems like a nice place"

"What the restaurant?"

"No, Bath" She smiled at him "Have you missed me?"

"Nope, have you missed me?"

"Course, God you were such hard work"

"Thanks"

"You're welcome"

He knew he was smirking at her, he was so unbelievably happy to see her and out of the hospital setting so that he couldn't quite wipe the smile off his face. He hadn't been exaggerating when he'd said that she looked beautiful, she looked lovely, her shiny hair swinging around her shoulders and her Bambi eyes huge as she struggled to contain her need to smile at him in the same way he was smiling at her. Neither of them seemed to need any words which was just as well as there were great long silences during which they appeared to be having an entire conversation without the need for any words at all, neither of them were even particularly aware of what they were eating, they just kept on looking into each other's eyes and smiling.

"Come on tell me how you've been?"

"That should be me asking you that, you're the one what's in the bloody leg brace, the one what was in hospital, not me"

"Yup, but that's boring, talking about me, I want to talk about you, what you've been doing and where you've been going and everything"

"Shit, you're not a stalker are you?" She tried her best to look alarmed and not to giggle at him "You sound like one"

"No of course I'm not" He laughed "I just miss the little chats we used to have every day, well, actually to be honest, I really miss seeing you every day, I was happy when you were the last thing I saw before I went to sleep and the first thing I saw every morning"

"Do you? Well, I miss you too, it hasn't been the same since you got discharged, not that I'm not glad that you was better enough to get off home, but still ….."

"When I wanted to look for you, you know, to find you so that I could tell you just how sorry I was for the way I behaved that night, the first time I met you, I never intended to …. well… I never thought …." He picked up her hand and twined his fingers in hers as he'd done before when he'd held her hand in hospital.

"What does that mean? You never thought what?"

"It means, well, that I never intended for it to be any more than that, did I? For us to sit here together like his, that's down to Lady Luck, at the end of the day it's all a matter of luck isn't it? Who we meet, who we fall in love with ….."

"I'm still not sure that I know what you mean, you don't know me, not really, you only know the me that looked after you when you was Tom and Dick so you're bound to feel a bit of some'ing aren't you? I mean most people what come out of hospital feel a bit grateful or some'ing don't they, well, as long as no-one tried to finish them off or nothing"

"What are you talking about?" He snorted a laugh "My being ill has got nothing whatsoever to do with it, lots of people looked after me it wasn't just you, and I don't adore any of them, it's chemistry, and don't forget that I know the you that gets pissed in nightclubs as well, the one that tells army officers to shut the fuck up and mind their own business"

"I never said that did I?" She paused "Don't sound like me at all"

"Yup you did, well as near as dammit anyway, and it sounds exactly like you"

"I'm sorry about that" She chewed her bottom lip trying her best to look contrite "Have I told you that already, that I'm sorry?"

"Yup, and to be fair I was being a total arse"

"Yeah, you were"

"You don't have to agree with me, you could lie and pretend it wasn't like that"

"Yeah I could" She paused, then wrinkled her nose and smirked at him before breaking into a giggle "Not going to though"

-OG-

"How long have you got before you finish Molly? Before you qualify?"

"Three months and a bit, then as long as I don't balls up me final exams I'll be qualified 'n I'll need to find a job"

"What, you won't stay where you are?"

"Nah don't work like that, I'll have to look for a proper job, not as a student, but as a Staff Nurse, I can't quite believe it actually, Molly Dawes, useless waste of space, a Staff Nurse, well a junior one anyhow"

"What the hell do you mean useless waste of space? You're not useless or a waste of apace, why on earth would you think that?" He picked up her hand and started ticking things off by bending her fingers over his hand, one by one "You're brilliant, you're a brilliant nurse, you're kind, you're funny, you're gorgeous, and it was the high spot of my day when you appeared, I used to look forward to seeing you and some days it was the only thing that _did_ make me happy"

"Thank you, but I think you might be just a little bit biased"

"No, I'm not"

"Yeah think you are, Paul thought I was a waste of space didn't he? And I sort of knew that that was what he thought and that it was all gonna go to shit, cos all the clues was there, but me?" She shrugged and started looking over his left shoulder rather than looking straight at him and running the risk of catching his eye "I just stuck me stupid head in the sand, didn't I? Pretended to meself that none of it were happening, that he wouldn't let me down like that, that he wouldn't of let me shell out all that money without telling me what was what. He knew it were money that I hadn't got so that I had to work in that mini-mart as well as doing me proper job, mind you, to be fair, he didn't know I were working there cos I never actually told him, and it weren't that I minded doing it, it was a dump but it was fun and I loved the people I worked with. I don't know where he thought the money was coming from, maybe that me dad had been out on the rob or some'ing, but I should have known, should of seen that he was way out of my league, cos he bloody well was and he knew it even if I didn't"

Molly wanted more than anything to tell him that she could see that he was out of her league every bit as much as Paul had been, but she couldn't find the right words, and he'd only deny it. It didn't matter anyway because the sort of relationship she was going to have with him was totally different to the one she'd had with Paul, she would never make the same mistakes again, would never believe in all that sort of bollocks again.

"Have you seen him since?"

"What, since me wedding day that wasn't?" She giggled wanting to lighten the atmosphere "Nah, wanted to, it were so hard for me to believe he could just do that, could just walk away from me like that, but me mate Sally said she'd sit on me before she'd let me go anywhere near him and she was right. HHHHe weren't worth it" Molly smiled, suddenly not a bit happy at the way they'd ended up talking about twat face which was the last thing she wanted to do "Can we talk about something else now?"

"Of course we can, but can I ask you just one more thing?"

"If you must"

"Did he ever pay back any of the money he owed you?"

"Course not, his mum sent my mum a cheque for some of it and me mum gave it to me before me dad could get his bleeding mitts on it. It went a bit of the way to paying off some of me credit card bills but it weren't nearly as much as I'd spent on all sorts of bollocks that she said we had to have"

"No, I thought not" He hated everything he'd heard and was appalled that Paul, someone he'd known almost all his life, could have been such a little prick and on top of that had then gone around calling _her_ a gold-digger and whining about how much it had cost him.

-OG-

"So what you gonna do now? When will you be getting back to it?"

"I don't know, I've got some rehab at Headley Court and then I'll have to see, it all depends on how fit I am, whether I can go back to the way my life was before because if not I'll probably resign my commission, I don't think I'm cut out for a desk job somewhere"

"You'd be a lot safer behind a desk though wouldn't you? No bugger shoots at you when you're sitting behind a desk do they?"

"No I suppose not, but I don't think it's for me"

"If you leave the army what will you do?"

"I have no idea" He snorted a laugh down his nose "Everyone keeps telling me that I should be grateful to still be alive and in one piece and I am, believe me I am, and I know that that's all thanks to you and the people like you who looked after me" he ignored her small noise of protest at his words "But all my life, ever since I left school, I wanted to be in the army, it _is_ my life, or it was, it was all I ever wanted to do but it was what broke up my marriage to Rebecca. She couldn't bear the fact that I was always far happier living out of a Bergen than I was when I was at home, I suppose you can't blame her for that, or that I didn't want the settled life that she wanted, but because I couldn't, or I wouldn't, give it to her, eventually she found someone who could or that's what she thought anyway"

"What you saying, that she found someone else?"

"Yup, it didn't last but that's what happened while I was away in Afghan just before the first time I met you"

"Shit"

Molly now had this horrible vision of the ex-Mrs. James rapidly becoming the current Mrs. James again and that all those hours that the glossy and expensive looking blonde girl had spent by his bedside meant that they could well be working towards some sort of reconciliation; that this meal was exactly what he'd said it was, a simple thank you.

"Don't look like that" He shook his head "I didn't mean to drag all that up, and the thing is, Molly" He hesitated then took a deep breath so that she thought Oh God, here it comes "That was before I met you, I used to think that army life was all that was important to me, but everything changed when you came into my life"

"Really?"

"Yup, really" He caught hold of her hands across the table then leaned forward to kiss her, so that Molly leaned forward towards him at the exact moment that the waitress chose to appear next to them with her bottle of wine all ready to top up their glasses, stopping him, them, in their tracks.

"I've been wanting to kiss you ever since I first started looking after you"

"A pity you didn't, having you kissing me better would have been the very best bloody treatment I can think of, although, if I'm being honest, Molly, I think I'm a bit shocked" He was smirking again, looking down at their linked hands on the table, and quite obviously pretending "I hope it's not going to be part of your routine bedside manner when you're a Staff Nurse, kissing people better"

"No it's not, I hadn't never given it any thought before but maybe I should"

"No, don't even think about it" He laughed as he stood up using the back of the chair to help him, his leg tended to stiffen up after he'd sat for any length of time "Shall we go?"

"Where we going?"

"Home?"

"What about your Mum? Well, and your Dad, of course, but your mum knows me, I mean, does she know I'm gonna stop? I mean, well you know what I mean …."

"Dad's taken her to Lake Garda for a few days, he reckons that now I'm on the mend she needs a bit of a break, which she does, so she's not there, there's no-one there, the house is empty" He looked a bit worried for a second and tugged at the curls on the back of his neck before looking at her again.

"Why didn't you say nothing before?"

"I didn't want to say anything that would make it sound as if I was a teenager trying to _lure_ you back to mine with the promise of an empty house, but you don't have to stay at my parents' place if you don't want to, you just have to say the word and the TraveLodge it is"

"You're not trying to _lure_ me back to yours then?"

"Depends" He put his hand out and took hers as she stood up and joined him "Did it work?"

"Yeah, I'll just get me stuff from the cloakroom"

-OG-

"Holy fuck" Molly stopped dead on the street outside the house and whispered to herself as she looked at the outside of 20 Royal Crescent, she was still holding onto his hand so that he had to stop as well and check why she was suddenly resisting going up to the front door. She'd always thought that Paul's parents lived in a posh pad which had over-awed her more than a little bit, but this place made theirs look like something on a council estate, a bit like the one her parents lived on.

If she'd been harbouring any fantasies at all about them as a 'couple' or had any doubts at all about her earlier assessment of their relationship and where it might lead, they disappeared in a flash as he led her through the front door. She stood absolutely stock still and looked around at the entrance hall and the staircase with eyes that were out on stalks and as round as organ stops and she was almost certain that her mouth was open as well before she closed it with a snap… out of her league didn't even begin to describe this place, it was a totally different ball bag altogether.

"Molly" He was standing waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs as she looked around, speechless, her overnight bag on the floor at his feet, he was dismayed by the expression on her face, her thoughts and her feelings were written all over it "Have you ever been to barracks?"

"Nah" She shook her head, that was the last thing she'd expected him to say "Why?"

"Because that's where I live, in barracks, this isn't mine, this belongs to my parents, it's their place" He didn't mention the house he'd shared with Rebecca which still partly belonged to him but which he didn't live in anymore or that Royal Crescent would eventually be his.

He undid the top button of her coat then tucked his hands under the collar to pull it up to frame her face, kissed her lips gently then pulled back a bit, he was having a lot of difficulty controlling his urge to deepen the kiss, he wanted nothing more than to wrap his arms round her and hold her as tightly as he possibly could, to bring back the happy smile to her face, the mood between them seemed to have changed drastically as soon as they'd arrived here.

Molly looked up at his serious expression and couldn't stop the giggle that was bubbling up, wanting to escape, although she wasn't entirely sure whether it was because she was seeing the funny side of it all or whether it was a nervous laugh because she was so horrified.

"What are you laughing at? There's nothing funny"

"Yeah there is, I can't wait to see your face when you see my family's gaffe"

-OG-

 _ **A/N: Thanks for sticking with me and for reviewing, I do hope you enjoy reading about their date as much as I enjoyed writing it. Chap. 6 is almost ready and as long as I can resist the temptation to keep deleting bits, I will be updating tomorrow.**_


	6. Chapter 6

_**You're my Night and Day**_

She certainly hadn't meant to make it sound as if she was inviting him, there was no way on earth she was ever taking him home to east Ham for a nice chat and a cuppa with her Mum and Nan, or even worse, with her dad, but he'd immediately said how much he was looking forward to meeting her family so that she'd raised her eyebrows and giggled incredulously.

"You're bleeding deranged, you know that don't you?"

"No I'm not …. here"

He held his hand out to help her off with her coat and then threw both their coats onto the newel post of the bannister, picked up her bag which he slung over his right shoulder and struggled to stop it slipping down his arm as he held onto the bannister rail, then held out his other hand for her to hold so that they could walk up the stairs side by side.

"Here, give it here, you need to bleeding hold on properly when you're on the stairs, you don't want to fall"

"Its fine, I've got it"

"Stop being such a dipshit, you don't want you to fall down the bleeding stairs, I'm off duty and you don't want to end up back in hospital, do you?" She stood her ground with her hand out waiting for him to take her bag off his shoulder and give it to her so that he could hold on properly without anything impeding him as he climbed the stairs

"Yes Nanny"

"If you fall you'll end up having to have some nurse give you bed baths again"

"Is that a promise?" He raised his eyebrows suggestively.

"She'll most likely have even colder hands than me"

"Impossible"

"Oi"

-OG-

Charles sat with his back against the headboard of his bed and struggled with the fastenings on the leg brace that he wasn't supposed to walk without, but wished more than anything that he'd left the bloody thing off when he'd gone to meet her. He could easily have got a taxi each way so that the distances he'd have had to walk would have been minimal because sitting there struggling to undo and remove a lump of plastic from his leg wasn't exactly what he'd had in mind.

"Do you want me to do that?"

The thick carpet on the bedroom floor meant that he hadn't heard her come back in from the bathroom and his mouth went dry making him swallow convulsively when he looked up to see her standing a little way back from the bed. She was barefoot so that she looked very tiny, her long hair falling down her back over the thin robe she was wearing, a robe that was thin enough for him to be able to see her body clearly outlined through it. Molly had looked in the large mirror over the bathroom basin and wished now that she'd bought something new and slinky in some way. The cotton robe she'd bought with her was hardly sexy, it was old and it had been dirt cheap from the market to start with so that now it had been washed so often it was tissue paper thin with the pattern all gone, it's only saving grace was that it didn't look as much of a rag as usual because she'd actually ironed it before poking into a corner of her bag, her other option had been her even older and tattier fleecy one that had a horrible stain on it from her sitting in God knows what but which wouldn't come off, so this was the best of a bad lot.

"Please"

His voice was barely more than a whisper as he looked at her and saw the intense concentration on her face as she struggled to undo the fastenings, one of which appeared to be jammed shut and remembered her having the same expression on her face as she'd checked his pulse and blood pressure when she'd been looking after him. At the time he'd had to concentrate very hard on not imagining her next to him with her hair spread all over his pillow. He no longer had any desire at all to grin, more than anything else in the world he wanted to put his arms round her and hold her so that he could stroke her hair and run his fingers down her face, then kiss her and kiss her and kiss her with all the pent-up longing that had been there bubbling away under the surface for weeks.

"Okay?"

She dropped the leg support on the floor and looked up from where she was kneeling next to the bed, her eyes huge and her face totally serious, matching his expression, as he leaned over and lifted her onto the bed next to him.

"I am now" Kissing her was everything he'd thought it was going to be, everything that he'd wanted it to be as she ran her hands over his back on top of the shirt that he was still wearing and kissed him back as intensely as he was kissing her. He felt her small hands move round from his back onto his shoulders then her fingers began to move down unfastening the tiny buttons on the shirt and he felt the familiar tightening in his groin, the tightening that he'd had to work so very hard to suppress, to control, in the last few weeks. His shirt ended up on the floor swiftly followed by his jeans and boxers as he untied the belt on her gown then gazed at her, his pupils so dilated that his eyes appeared huge and very dark brown.

"God you are so beautiful"

"You're not so bad yourself"

"Nothing you haven't seen before"

"True, although, I dunno, there are some differences, well one anyhow" Molly looked up at his face and into his eyes doing her best to look innocent, as though she wasn't being the least bit tacky, then smirked, laughing as he burst into a shout of laughter, throwing his head back as he did it. She couldn't ever remember a time when she'd wanted to laugh and tease anyone quite so much at the same time as being desperate to touch them, to stroke them, to kiss them and to make love to them and for them to touch and kiss and make love to her "Do you want to shut up now, or shall we talk about me pissing off to that TraveLodge?"

"I'll shut up now" He kissed her gently then with more and more purpose until they both forgot all about teasing and laughing because suddenly their need to touch each other, to kiss each other, to learn about each other and to make each other happy was all that mattered.

-OG-

"Wow"

He was propped up on his forearms gazing down into her greyish green eyes, her Bambi eyes, and was ecstatically happy, totally satisfied, drained, exhausted, and completely euphoric so that he was lost for words as he dropped little gentle fleeting kisses all over her face. That moment when she'd clung to him, when her body had been flooded with sensations that gave him permission to surrender to his own waves of ecstasy had been everything he could ever have imagined it was going to be and a lot more than he'd expected. If he'd been honest he'd have admitted to being a bit concerned about his stamina and energy levels, it was less than a month since the beautiful, gorgeous girl now smiling up at him had been giving him a blanket bath because he was too weak to be allowed to get out of bed. As it was, none of that mattered; he'd been lost in a world where there was nothing else but her, where she was all that was important because all he wanted to do was make her happy.

"Are you okay"

She was running her hand gently up and down his arm suddenly worried that he might be totally exhausted and in pain or something, he was very quiet and although no-one would have believed it a just now, he was less than two weeks out of hospital after being dangerously ill. She moved her hand and ran her fingers gently over the still slightly red and angry looking puckered skin of the scar on his stomach "Does it hurt?"

"Nope, and I have never been more okay in my entire life, what about you, are you alright?"

"Yeah, ditto"

"Ditto?" He laughed "Lovely"

501 days, that was how long it had been since the last time she'd had sex, she'd worked it out while shed been sitting on the train travelling towards Bath, and, as Sal kept on telling her, that was almost long enough to be called a born again virgin. Although she'd kept on telling herself that there was no way she was going to sleep with him, she'd also been the tiniest bit afraid that if by any chance she did, by some totally unforeseen circumstances or other, like a meteor strike or some'ing, she was going to be very rusty, might even have forgotten how to. In the end nothing could have been farther from the truth so that she was now bathed in the sort of blissful aftermath that made everything else disappear, except that their mingled sweat was now drying on their bodies and it was chilly in the bedroom so that she gave an involuntary shiver. Charles leaned over and dragged the duvet up from the floor where it had somehow ended up so that he could tuck it round them increasing her feeling of cosy contentment.

-OG-

"Hey"

Sleep had been a bit elusive for Charles; he'd fallen asleep very quickly, had been dead to the world, but had woken after a few hours and had then kept waking and dozing, comfortable, warm and happy but very aware of the girl breathing quietly on the pillow next to him. He'd been awake for some while just quietly watching her sleep so that he hadn't realised at first that she was awake, but as soon as he saw her lashes fluttering and her eyes opening he'd pulled her closer, tucking her into his side. She'd started to run her hands over the muscles of his chest and his back and then stroked her fingers lightly over the scar on his stomach. He'd woken, as he almost invariably did, with an erection, something that was now being exacerbated by her closeness, by the way she was sprawled on him and by the way she was running her hands over his body so that his erection was now not only very evident but becoming extremely insistent. Despite all his concerns a few weeks back, all those anxious moments he'd had when he'd worried that his body would decide to betray him and react like some randy teenage boy with no self-control whenever she touched him, especially when she'd touched his backside or groin, it had never actually happened so she didn't know that particular reaction like she knew the rest of his body. He heard her soft giggle as she moved one of her legs on top of his so that he rolled her gently onto her back and began to drop tiny kisses down from her throat towards her breasts, then grazed her taut nipples lightly with his teeth.

"Hey"

He lifted his head as she answered him, smiling and arched her body, pressing it towards him and against him, obviously enjoying what he was doing, She put her hands down and touched him, which meant that this time their lovemaking was fast and furious and left them both feeling breathless, sweaty and extremely happy.

"We're not gonna say anything to anyone about this, are we? I mean, I sort of think we should, you know, keep it to ourselves for a bit"

It hadn't actually occurred to him that she would have any doubts about him, about them, about what was between them, and he knew that it should have done. He should have realised that her shit experience with Paul Walker would have made her very insecure about relationships.

"I don't want to keep it to myself, Molly, I want to tell everyone who might be even the slightest little bit interested in us and then I want to tell everyone who doesn't give a shit as well"

"I dunno, Charles, I'm not sure that it's a good idea" He'd meant to make her happy but instead he could feel the tension building as she stopped smiling, shook her head, then spoke "If we tell people, then all that gold-digger shit is gonna start up again, you know that don't you? And I don't know if I can do all that again"

"Who told you all that? Was it Walker?"

"Not as such, I mean he never said it to me face, but someone told me what he were saying about me" She shrugged "And he was right weren't he? I mean, that's what I was, I was a sort of gold-digger and I can just imagine what people are going to say about me if they find out about you"

"What? What the hell are you talking about, of course it's not true, you weren't a gold digger, you weren't with him for his money were you? And you're not with me for mine, not that I've got any" He shook his head "I don't think he's got any either, well, any that doesn't belong to his mother that is"

"What, you haven't got the odd million or two tucked away somewhere?" She paused, struggling to turn it into a joke then giving up "I didn't mean that it was all about money, Charles, I didn't want any money, but I did want the nice house, 'n the ….." She paused again, searching for the right words to describe what she was talking about, to explain what she meant "I don't mean I wanted a big house or nothing, well nothing like this place anyhow, I just wanted to live somewhere nice and I s'pose what I'm trying to say is, I wanted the life"

"That's not being a gold-digger Molly, being with someone and making sure that you and the person you love have got a nice home together and a nice life goes with the territory when you get married, especially when you have kids and even sometimes when you don't actually get married, but it's definitely part of the whole being together thing"

"That's me stuffed then, innit? Cos I am never, ever getting married, I'm allergic so that even the bleeding word brings me out in a rash"

"So you don't want to have any kids?"

"Maybe, I don't know, do I? I've never really thought about it" She was lying through her teeth, of course she'd thought about having kids, well, about having kids with Paul. There was going to be two of them, preferably one of each but not necessarily, and it didn't matter whether they were boys or girls, they were going to be beautifully dressed and beautifully behaved with all the things she hadn't had when she was little, straight out of the Boden catalogue, another one of her dreams that had bitten the dust "Anyhow you don't need to be married to have kids"

"No of course you don't, but if you have children with a soldier it's much better if you are married, otherwise the army won't necessarily look after you if something happens to their father"

"Better not have any then"

"That's a shame" He laughed and smoothed her hair back behind her ears "I think you'd make a lovely mum"

"Well I don't bloody well intend to find out, not for at least another ten years anyhow" She giggled then kissed him on the cheek, softening the harshness of her words "Charles, can we just not tell anyone please, well not just yet anyhow?"

"Okay, you win; we won't tell anyone if you don't want to"

"Let's just see what happens first before we start, you know, doing all that …"

-OG-

"Where you been for the last couple of days and why weren't you answering your bloody phone?" Sally then screeched down the phone as a possible answer occurred to her "Oh for fuck sake, please tell me you weren't with twat face, I don't want to have to have you locked up"

"Alright I won't tell you" She heard Sally's exclamation of disgust "Okay, I was with someone and he is a soldier, just not twat face"

"Thank Christ for that" Sally paused "Come on then, details, who is he? What's his name? Where did you find him? Did you sleep with him? Shit, you did, didn't you?"

"Might of done, his name's Charles and I met him a while back in a nightclub, well, you were there, and then he was a patient" There was a long and ominous silence from the other end of the phone "He's different Sal, I think he really, really likes me and I … well, I sort of like him ….. a lot"

-OG-

 _ **A/N: Thank you for your reviews they mean the world to me, and I hope that you enjoyed the rest of the date …and as promised I stayed away from the delete button so I hope it makes sense. Chapter 7 will take a couple of days (I haven't actually written it yet, just the outline) Lily, husband and RL permitting, but I will post it as soon as I can.**_


	7. Chapter 7

"You're a fucking madwoman, you know that don't you?"

"No, I'm not"

"Well, in that case I only hope you're right about him" Sally laughed "You know that I think all men are bastards and that it's just that some take a bit longer to prove it than others"

"Sal, he's not, honestly he's not"

"Hmmm"

-OG-

"Go on, just for a bit"

"A bit of what?"

"A bit of a cuddle, what _did_ you think I meant?"

"I know exactly what you meant and I can't otherwise I'm gonna be late"

"I'll get up and give you a lift in _"_

"Nah, you're alright"

He was sitting propped up against the headboard waiting for his coffee to cool down enough to drink with his arms folded behind his head as he watched her braid her hair and got ready to go off to work. It was still incredibly early, barely light outside and it was raining but her recent change to working a spell of days meant that she had very early starts and last night had been one of the very rare times that she'd agreed to stay over on a 'school night' as she described it. The two months since their first date in Bath had been some of the happiest times that Charles could remember, as well as the most frustrating, and not just because she was standing in front of him wearing only a plain white bra and knickers and looked incredible sexy…. and she was refusing to come back to bed.

She'd spent every bit of her days off with him in the small flat he'd rented, the flat that he'd lied to her about because he didn't want to tell her that the only reason he'd rented it was so that they would have somewhere to be alone together. Instead, he'd told her that he'd rented it because it was close to Headley, which it was, and that living in barracks anywhere wasn't for him anymore. Whether she'd believed him or not he wasn't sure, but she'd refused point blank to move into it with him, had insisted on staying on in the nurses home and he knew her well enough now to know that the thought of admitting that he'd rented it just because of her, or because of them, would frighten her with its degree of implied commitment.

"See you Friday then, be good, do all your exercises 'n that"

"Yes Mum" He paused "Not till Friday?"

"Nah, but we will have the whole weekend, well, if you want"

He raised his eyebrows as he looked at her without answering, then shook his head slightly and resisted the temptation to give an exasperated sigh, he wasn't trying to imply that he didn't want her to be there all weekend, she knew that as well as he did, but was denying that there was ever going to be any hint of a doubt over it.

"I'm supposed to go to that bloody regimental stag dinner thing on Friday night, and I'm not sure I can get out of it because it's a three line whip, but even if I do have to go I won't be late back, I'd far rather have an early night with you"

"I need to do some studying anyhow, I haven't done any for bleeding ages so if I fail me exams it'll be all your fault"

"You're not going to fail your exams, you're going to be brilliant, you are bloody brilliant and you can study here can't you?"

"When I was a little kid I used to get in such a bleeding state when I knew we was going to have a test or some'ing that I'd end up puking 'n that meant that Inever had to go to school that day, 'n when I got a bit older I never went anyhow which was why I had to work me bleeding socks off later on, but I don't think telling anyone that I feel ill, that I might puke, will work for these exams, some bugger would just tell me to pull meself together for fuck sake"

"You'll be great, now off you go and torture some poor bastard, give him a bed bath with freezing cold hands"

"Oh yeah, better not be late, I've got a fit young bloke to look after … forgotten that"

"Lovely"

"Yeah he is and he's very grateful" She giggled at the expression on his face then chewed at her bottom lip "Nearly eighty, keeps his teeth in a glass next to his bed, okay?"

She was still giggling as she finished getting dressed and went over to kiss him goodbye, resisting all his attempts to pull her back into bed.

"I love you, be careful"

"Bye"

"And?"

"Gonna miss you"

"I'm going to miss you too, and? …"

"What?" She was closing the door as she called back to him, it wasn't that there was any doubt about the way she felt, it was just that she was still very self-conscious about saying anything, so she was almost whispering as she added "Love you"

"What? Didn't quite hear you, say that again"

She put her head back round the door "Do you need an hearing aid, you poor old bugger you?"

"Oi"

-OG-

"Wa…., Paul …. a word" Charles raised the volume of his voice slightly to attract the other man's attention to stop him walking away and struggled to control his tone, there was no need to start some sort of confrontation. He hadn't known that Paul would be there, although thinking about it, he should have done, but if he had known he might well have stayed away from the event, even though that would have been frowned on, mainly because it was very hard for him to do what Molly wanted and mind his own business.

He'd left her there sitting in the middle of his bed with her hair tied up in a messy topknot surrounded by textbooks, chocolate, her tablet and phone, just in case she got bored and had to go on Facebook, a pen and pad and a giant glass of wine. She was wearing one of his sweatshirts that completely swamped her and apparently not a lot else as she 'studied' for her finals and he'd wanted more than anything to stay at home and 'help'. She'd giggled and told him to piss off to the dinner that she wasn't invited to, and wouldn't have gone to anyway, the one he didn't want to go to either and told him that he looked drop dead gorgeous in his mess uniform and that he wasn't to get too rat-arsed because she'd need distracting by the time he got home.

"Does that mean I'm on a promise?"

"Probably" She'd been giggling as he sat on the bed and started kissing down the back of her neck "Definitely if you keep that clobber on"

"Well I'll skip the bloody dinner then and just stay here"

"Later, I'm studying or I'm trying to and how the fuck can I concentrate with you doing that, and looking like that, so go away and stop distracting me"

-OG-

"Nice to see you, Charles, how are you getting on? How's the leg?" Paul Walker smiled as he stopped and waited for Charles to catch up and Charles concentrated hard on not smacking the smug, self-satisfied expression off his face. He knew that the Paul he was talking to didn't actually look any different to the Paul he'd always known, it was just knowing what he'd done ….. and to Molly of all people, someone who could never have deserved it in a million years.

"Yep, not bad thanks, almost finished with Headley now so I'm getting there" He was trying very hard to sound normal "I've got my medical in a few weeks so I'm hoping to get back to my unit quite soon. Paul, glad I've run into you tonight, I've been meaning to have a word" He took a deep breath, horribly aware that he was just about to do something he'd said he wouldn't and that Molly would kill him if she found out "I was talking to an old friend of yours recently and I was a bit … um, surprised at what she was telling me"

"Really, who was that?"

On the surface Paul appeared to be only vaguely interested and completely unconcerned, except that a very small tic had appeared under one eye, so that Charles knew that he knew. He made sure that he kept a pleasant smile on his own face, not for a minute did he want to betray any of the emotions that were seething in him even though he longed to shout 'Got you, you little arsehole' into Paul Walker's face so he could watch him squirm.

"Molly, Molly Dawes, I understand that you used to know her quite well"

"Well, yes I did know her, as you say quite well, in fact, I was engaged to her for, Oh, must have been going on for a year, well, until it all fell apart, you know how these things are, but you probably know that if you were talking to her"

"No, remind me"

"Well, she always took it far more seriously than I did, you know, she's a lovely girl but a bit dumb and we come from very different worlds. We wanted different things so it wasn't ever going to work out the way she thought it was, and in the end we decided it was better on the whole to call a halt to things before there was any wedding rather than after, you know, better a broken engagement than a divorce, well, you'd be the first to agree with that I'm sure" There was a sly look on his face as he made a reference to divorce.

"That's not exactly the way it happened though is it Paul? Because as far as I heard, you came to that conclusion all on your own on the morning of the wedding, you didn't discuss it with her at all. It might well have been the right conclusion, who the fuck knows? Probably was, but I'm sure Molly would have appreciated a little more notice and a little more consideration than someone who just fucked off leaving her with all the bills"

Charles was managing, just, to keep his easy controlled, almost conversational manner with the other man who'd begun to bluster looking to turn the conversation away from himself and his part in what had happened, to make it all seem as if he'd been terribly reasonable and sensible.

"She wasn't left with any bills, my mother covered them, and what's your interest in her anyway? Don't tell me she's moved onto you now?"

"Well that was very nice of your mother, does she always clear up your shit for you?"

Charles ignored what Paul just said about Molly moving on and didn't wait for him to answer before he went on, knowing that Molly would now definitely kill him if she ever found out.

"What happened, Paul? Did you get scared? Because Molly was left with crippling debts, as well as knowing that she'd come close to marrying a total arsehole who didn't even have the balls to tell her what he was about to do, what he was scared of, and that was on top of her having to work two jobs to pay for a whole load of stuff that was your responsibility"

"Well, you know what they say about a standing dick having no conscience don't you?"

Charles always appeared to people who didn't know him well to have exemplary control over his emotions but it was getting more and more difficult to control the need he had to simply punch Paul Walker into the middle of the following week.

"Maybe you'd like to explain how come you went around telling everyone that she was a gold-digger and that's why the engagement was broken off and there was no mention that it was you being a complete knob, an arsehole, that was the problem. In your own time, Paul, feel free to start explaining that to me"

"What do you expect me to say here Charles? That I'll pay her back or something? Ancient history and it's not going to happen, my friend, not in a million years and anyway I can't see what the hell it's got to do with you"

"Firstly I am not your friend and I'll tell you what it's got to do with me, Molly is very important to me and I, well, let's just say I'm looking out for her" Charles had never been more grateful that she couldn't hear what he was saying, she would not only kill him, slowly, but would probably cut his balls off before she did it "If Molly and I ….. well, that is definitely none of your business, but if I hear one word, just ONE FUCKING WORD from anyone about her or about us being together then everyone in the mess, and make no mistake when I say everyone I mean everyone, is going to hear exactly what you did, they're going to know exactly what sort of fucker you are and how your mummy has to follow you around wiping your arse"

Charles walked off knowing that he'd just made an open enemy, and with the absolute conviction that he was going to have to come clean to Molly which meant that there was a distinct possibility, actually more like a racing certainty, that he was going to end up on her shit list for some time to come.

-OG-

"You're back early, didn't you have fun?"

Molly was still sitting in the middle of the bed but had given up pretending to study and was listening to music on her I Pad, eating a bar of chocolate and finishing what was obviously not her first glass of wine.

"Told you I wouldn't be late" He nodded in the direction of the glass in her hand "Is there any of that left?"

"Oops, sorry, it was very nice wine though" She looked at him over the rim of the giant wine goblet she was holding "I only had two glasses"

"What, two of those glasses? Not much then" He was laughing "I can see that it was nice"

"Are you sober?"

"Yup, more than you are by the looks of it"

He was still laughing as he made the decision not to mention anything about his evening or Paul Walker until she was sober, for a start her happily pissed mood was very endearing and the last thing he wanted to do was to spoil it. He undid his bow tie then slung his mess jacket on the chair.

"Oi, what you doing?"

"Getting undressed, why?"

"You can't, you promised me you'd come to bed in all that lot, I been looking forward to it all evening"

"Was that before or after you drank a bottle of wine?"

"What's that gotta do wiv whether or not I fancy you in that lot?"

"Molly, I love you to bits, you know that, but I am not going to bed fully dressed in my mess uniform, okay?" He was now laughing so hard that he was having trouble getting his words out clearly.

"Spoilsport"

-OG-

 _ **A/N: This was a lot easier and quicker to write than I expected, in fact it sort of wrote itself once I got going and I was alone yesterday evening without anyone telling me to stop and step away from the laptop. Chapter 8 is still a work in progress – in my head**_


	8. Chapter 8

"Morning gorgeous"

"Mornin"

"How's the head?"

"Fine, fine thanks, but I seem to of gone to bed in your sweater last night, sorry" She did her best to look and sound contrite, which she was, her memory of the night before was just the tiniest bit hazy. She could remember doing her best to entice him into bed when he was still fully dressed in his mess uniform and then remembered kneeling up on the bed in front of him, running her hands up and down the backs of his thighs and stroking his bum while he was undoing his dress shirt, him saying he had to go to the loo, then nothing much after that "Ugh, don't think I brushed me teeth from all that chocolate neither, I'm gonna end up with 'em in a glass like one of me old boys if I don't watch it"

She looked up him, widening her eyes in an attempt to fool him with the most innocent expression she could muster, doing her level best to hide the fact that her mouth tasted as though something had crawled in and died and her head was killing her, she had an absolutely pounding headache.

Charles wasn't taken in by the giggle, or her whole act, not for a second, he'd seen the involuntary shudder and the way she'd carefully put the tea he'd just bought her on the bedside table without putting it anywhere near her mouth let alone tasting it, and the way she was squinting at the light. She didn't seem to have any recollection of him tucking her into bed the night before or of the way she'd refused to let him take the sweatshirt off her, she had been clinging on to it for dear life muttering 'get off'.

"Molly, listen about last night …"

"Yeah, look, I'm really sorry about that, you know, I'm sorry about drinking all your wine 'n then falling asleep when you was brushing your teeth or having a pee or whatever and I'm sorry about not brushing mine so that I'm minging this morning, and I'm really sorry for trying to get you into bed in your uniform 'n that, I'm really, really sorry, I think I might have overdone it a little bit when I was here on me own …. "

"Just shut the fuck up will you" He put his head back and laughed knowing that she would laugh at his choice of words, although he wasn't sure just how amused she was going to be when he told her what he'd done "That isn't what I wanted to talk to you about, and you were bloody gorgeous last night, you can drink as much of my wine as you like and you can try and get me into bed in my uniform _any time_ you like, although it would be quite nice if you didn't go to sleep before I got a chance to get in with you, and it's our wine, not mine, but that isn't what I wanted to talk to you about" He took a deep breath "I wanted to say that I need to tell you" He took another deep breath "I did something very stupid last night, something that I know I shouldn't have and I'm sorry"

There was a complete silence following his words, one of those silences that are described as being able to hear a pin drop, as Molly stared at him mulling over what he'd just said, turning it over and over in her head, not sure how to react or what to say until finally she managed to get a sentence out.

"I thought you told me that last night was stag, isn't that what you told me, Charles, that it was a stag dinner?"

"It was stag, what has that got to do with it?"

"Isn't that what you was just gonna tell me? That you got off with someone else"

"No, Christ almighty Molls, why on earth would I want to do that?" He had a deep frown on his face as he shook his head, sounding irritated then rubbed his fingers through the hairs on the back of his neck "Why would I want to be with someone else for fuck sake, I've got you waiting for me at home?"

"I dunno do I? Well, alright, if you didn't get off with someone what did you do that you shouldn't of?" Suddenly, it seemed as though nothing he could say was going to be anywhere near as bad as the confession she'd been expecting, so that she wanted to giggle with the relief "Did you tell the whatshisname, the Major, to do one or did you tell _him_ to shut the fuck up or something, you didn't lose your bloody job did you?"

"No, I didn't, but I did have a …. a word …. a chat ….. with Paul Walker and I'm sorry, I am so sorry Molly"

There was another long silence as Molly considered what she wanted to say next "You didn't hit him did you?"

"Nope, I really wanted to, but I couldn't, could I? Actually, I wanted to rip his fucking head off, but I couldn't do that either, not if I wanted to keep my job, bloody close run thing though"

"He's not worth losing your job for" Molly turned and looked up at his face trying for all the world to sound as though they were just having a reasonable discussion and that she wasn't hurt or furious with him, but couldn't help herself, she was both "Charles, why did you do that? I asked you, didn't I? I asked you not to say nothing to him and you promised me"

"I know, I've got no excuse, I'm sorry"

"What did he say about me?"

"Nothing"

"Don't lie, don't make it worse, course he did 'n I want to know what it was, if you don't tell me I'll start to … dunno, wonder what it is you're hiding from me, well I'm wondering that now, so just tell me, what the fuck did he say about me?"

She hated the thought that they'd been talking about her and that she had no idea what they'd been saying, it bought back all those horrible feelings of being totally inadequate that she'd had when she'd first found out that people, well, Paul and his mates, were calling her names behind her back and how unfair it had felt.

He shook his head as his memory ran through some of Paul Walker's choicer comments about her, how she was a lovely girl but dumb, and his crude comment about not having any conscience where she was concerned when he'd wanted a shag "Well, nothing about _you_ , but he said that he thought a broken engagement was better than a divorce and that he'd begun to believe that you weren't really suited and wouldn't last forever"

It sounded lame even to Charles' own ears because that didn't begin to explain why he hadn't talked to her about his doubts and why he'd left it until the morning of the wedding and then done a runner. Charles tried to think what else he could say that was the truth but which wouldn't break her into little pieces, and then realised that he didn't actually know why Paul had left it so late before pissing off the way he had, well, apart from his belief that she wasn't good enough and not having the balls to tell her that he wanted out …. .

"He reckoned he'd thought his mother had paid you back for all the money you'd laid out….." He paused as he dredged his memory trying to remember what the fuck else Paul had said as Molly interrupted him.

"Did you believe him? Tell you what, don't bother, I don't want to hear no more thanks, cos you know what, I don't believe you, not a fucking word of that sounds like him at all, but I can see that the two of you had a nice little chat"

"Molly, wait out a sec …. "

"Can't, sorry"

She'd got out of bed, determined not to give in and cry so she didn't even look at him, just made her way to the bathroom for a shower and two Nurofen, maybe even three, her head was still pounding, her mouth still tasted like a sewer and the happy bubble she'd been living in for the past few weeks had just crashed and burned. It was the thought of them, him Charles, talking about her behind her back and to Paul of all people, and Paul saying stuff to him that she just couldn't bear ….

-OG-

"This had better be bloody good, my eyes aren't going to be open for at least another two hours, it's Saturday, day off, remember?"

"Sal?"

"Oh, shit, what's he done?" Molly heard Sally's yawn "There's something wrong in paradise isn't there?"

"Nah, yeah, I dunno, any chance of you meeting me for a coffee or some'ing? Costa or somewhere? ….. please?"

"Well I would, but I didn't plan on getting dressed today"

"Please?"

"Shit ….. well, only if you buy me breakfast cos I'm totally skint, brassic and if I'm going to have to get dressed and go out before lunch, shit, _before lunch_ , on a Saturday when I didn't get to bed till all hours then you're going to have to make it worth my while" She gave another huge yawn "Café Rouge Woking, then I don't have to get on a bus or anything, about an hour, yeah?"

"Thanks Sal, you're a star"

-OG-

"Jesus, you look rough, I thought I looked like shit, but bloody hell" Sally was late and had just arrived flopping down opposite Molly in the booth she'd managed to grab when she'd arrived "God, you're not pregnant are you?"

"No I'm bleeding well not, do I look stupid?" Molly gulped, suddenly overwhelmed with the desire to burst into tears which she controlled with some difficulty "'Hello Moll how are you, sorry I'm late, are you well?' No, actually, I feel like shit, I'm all over the shop"

"I'm not late am I?" Sally frowned knowing full well that she was, _very_ late "Sorry, Hello Moll, how are you? Oh that's right you just said, didn't you? You feel like shit, so what's he done? You know you should have listened to me, don't you? I told you, they're all bastards, even Mr Wonderful"

Ten minutes, two cups of tea and a pile of raisin toast later and Molly finally ran out of steam as she realised she'd now gone right back to the beginning of her tale of woe and was repeating herself, mainly because Sally was looking at her shaking her head, an expression of total incomprehension written all over her face.

"So, where's Mr Perfect now?"

"Dunno, not sure, think he might of gone off for a run or some'ing, I never really …. I weren't exactly speaking to him was I? I was a bit upset"

"Does he know where you are? Or did you just piss off without telling him where you were going?"

Molly lifted her shoulders and shrugged, chewing at her bottom lip.

"So let me see if I've got this right, you're upset with him because he told the psychotic little wanker where to shove it?"

"I s'pose"

"So what the fuck is wrong with you? I mean, we all know he's a wanker and he's defo psychotic, and your Charles was only sorting him out, about time someone did" She shook her head "You know, it could be a lot worse, don't you, you could have married him"

"Don't"

"Lucky escape if you ask me, anyway I'd settle for someone like Mr Wonderful, someone who wanted to look out for me, well especially someone who looks like him" She giggled "Let's face it, I'd settle for a conscious shag at the moment"

"What, you wanna shag Charles?" She paused as Sally shook her head and pulled an 'I don't believe how stupid you can be' face "What the hell is a conscious shag anyhow?"

"Something that doesn't happen at 3.00 in the bloody morning after drinking a litre of Vodka first" Sally winced at her memory of the previous night "Did he hit him?"

"Nah"

"Pity" Sally giggled, the tea and toast were doing a great job on her blood sugar so that she was getting more awake by the second "You know what, Moll, I'm your best mate, yeah? So I'm going to be honest and please don't get upset with me, but I think you're wrong and I think you give far too many fucks about things that don't matter and people that don't matter, especially people like that shit-face wanker and it's time to stop, forget him"

"I know you do, think I'm wrong I mean, and I know you're right that I'm wrong, at least I think you are" She paused for a moment trying to work out if what she'd just said made sense then decided it had "I can't help being worried about what he might of said about me, twat face I mean, and whether Charles might of believed him, might of thought that I was lying about all that ….. stuff that happened" She shrugged again "I'm still worried what people will say if they find out about us, you know, me and him, if there is still a me and him, if I haven't put the kibosh on it and ….. I can't forget that I asked him not to say nothing 'n he did it anyhow"

"Haven't you ever done something that someone's asked you not to and then been sorry about it afterwards, bloody know I have, and of course he's going to believe you and not that psychotic little twerp, look, if he loves you he's not going to listen to anything that little wanker had to say is he? And of course there's still going to be a you and him, and if there isn't then he doesn't deserve you, simple as that"

-OG-

It was a while before he realised that she was standing in the doorway watching him as he squatted on his haunches, fingers of his right hand steadying himself as he looked through the glass door of the oven and tried to gauge whether the food he'd put in there was cooked or not because he'd forgotten to set the timer; the oven had been used so rarely since he'd moved in that it was still sparkling clean.

"You doing a Nigella?"

"Yup, packet's on the table" Molly picked up the cardboard sleeve from a Marks and Spencer's Chicken Ready Meal "Come and tell me if you think this is cooked, I forgot to put the bloody timer on"

She went over and squatted next to him steadying herself with the fingertips of her left hand on the floor and her right hand on his thigh as she peered through the glass door "How the fuck would I know, you know I'm useless at this shit, looks okay, take it out 'n see if it's hot in the middle"

He removed the dish and poked at the contents dubiously with a fork as they both looked closely at it, neither of them knowing how to tell whether it was cooked or not.

"I think you should bung it in the microwave for five minutes, make sure"

"Good idea" He set the timer then turned to look her fully in the face for the first time since she'd come into the kitchen, he'd been horribly afraid that she'd gone for good when he'd come back from his run and found the place empty "Is this a cease-fire?"

"S'pose" She looked up at him with her eyes suddenly swimming with tears as he his hand on the back of her neck under her hair and drew her towards him "Sorry"

" _You're sorry?_ What are _you_ sorry for? It's me that should be sorry, and I am"

"I wish I had a tardis then I could have me time over …. "

"What? What would you do differently?"

"All of it, I'd do all of it different, except for the bit where I got together with you, I wouldn't change any of that" She shrugged "What would you do different if you could?"

"Well, I wouldn't say a word to him for a start"

"It don't matter, it's not important" Molly shook her head "He's not important, I don't care anymore"

"Are you sure?"

"No, but I'm getting there"

He kissed her very gently, almost tentatively as though they had all the time in the world, and then he hissed her as though there was no time left for anything else ….. just as the microwave pinged making them both jump.

"Your food's ready"

"I'm not hungry" He put his hands up and encircled her forearms moving them down from round his neck then leaned back enough to look into her face, holding her hands and giving them a shake, and smirked, happiness breaking out over his face "I thought you were going to hate me when you found out what I'd done, and I minded like hell"

"I did try, I tried really hard but I don't think I could ever hate you" She put her arms back round his neck running her fingers through the soft hairs, then sighed, suddenly happy again.

"Bloody glad to hear it" He kissed her again "Please don't try too hard"

-OG-

 _ **A/N: Thank you for the reviews, I hope you enjoyed this – CJ in a mess uniform is a favourite fantasy of mine, so might have to re-visit it at some time if I can work it in. Chapter 9 is now the work in progress so asap.**_


	9. Chapter 9

_**A/N: Thank you to those of you who are sticking with me, I am more grateful than I can say because I have a really severe case of FF Author Paranoia, a nasty disease thing that seems to afflict all of us who contribute to these pages, so that we sit and look at a blank screen and then vow that we're going to stop putting ourselves through this….**_

-OG-

The bedroom was immaculately tidy, all her belongings, text books, pads, pens had all been tidied into a neat pile and the stuff that she had left strewn all over the room when she'd got ready to meet Sally had been 'squared away'. All the used cups and glasses had been removed and presumably washed up and her hair dryer and straighteners had been unplugged, the cords neatly coiled round the handles while the bed had been made with precision, pillows spaced evenly and the duvet smooth and centred, almost as if a nurse had done it, which she hadn't, she'd left it in exactly the same state as it had been when they'd got out of it. She now pulled a face, making the bed like that, it looked as though he'd used a ruler to get it so bleeding perfect, had been a complete waste of time and energy, it was totally wrecked again now.

"Bloody hell, you _have_ been busy"

"Army training"

He was kissing and nuzzling at her neck, lifting the long curls out of the way, happy that they'd made each other happy, that their fight was now over, although describing it as a fight seemed to be a bit of an exaggeration. It appeared that Molly didn't fight, any more than he did himself, but whereas he endeavoured to look at things dispassionately and discuss them in a logical, rational way taking as much of the emotion out of the situation as he could and then resolve it, she just closed herself off completely and removed herself physically, in other words, waltzed off in a huff. He wasn't used to being with someone who reacted like that, Rebecca would have screamed and shouted at him, thrown things, probably at his head, and then slammed doors before bursting into angry tears and that would have been a hell of a lot easier to deal with than the way Molly had reacted. She'd told him one evening that she was a tough cookie or 'hard as nails' as she'd put it, and she was right, but he didn't know, couldn't tell, just how much of that was her, the way she was made, or how much of it was yet another legacy of Paul Walker.

"You're gonna make someone a lovely wife one day"

"Who would that be then?" He laughed as he looked down into her eyes; he'd already got a fair idea of what her reaction was likely to be "You?"

"I don't think so, you'd have a bleeding fit if I said yes, wouldn't you?" She was laughing now as she looked into the soft, loving smile in the dark brown eyes looking into hers.

"Try me, go on dare you"

"Not bleeding likely, do I look like I'm nuts? I am not asking you to marry me, I'm never ever gonna ask anyone to marry me, I'm allergic, brings me out in a rash, told you that before"

"I know you did but I thought you might have changed your mind"

"Do hope you're not holding your breath"

Charles was still laughing showing that his intention had been for her to see the whole conversation as a joke, despite the fact that he wasn't 100% sure that there wasn't a hint of the truth tucked away in there somewhere, at least in what he'd said, but as far as she was concerned, well, he didn't know and he didn't think he wanted to, it wasn't the right time to try and make any plans for the future, that's if they had a future and he still wasn't that sure how she felt about that possibility … .

"Shall we go out and eat or get take-away?"

"What about that chicken stuff you cooked, what we going do with that?"

"Bin it at a rough guess, I don't think you can heat it up again without poisoning yourself and I don't fancy it cold, so stay in or go out, you choose"

"Me Nan would call that a bleeding wicked waste, she'd make you eat it even if it was cold" She giggled "When I was little and I wouldn't eat some'ing she used to tell me that there was kids in the world starving who'd be bleeding grateful for whatever it was I was turning me nose up at"

"Did it make you eat it?"

"Did it buggery, I used to wonder how she'd send it to them without the parcel getting all soggy" She laughed at her memory of Nan standing over her waggling her index finger and shaking her head as she pretended to be cross with her before she took the offending plate of food away and scraped it in the bin "If we go out we'll have to get up and get dressed"

"Stay in it is then"

-OG-

"Charles, I been thinking… "

"God, that sounds dangerous ….. "

"Ha ha, you're so bleeding hilarious you, aren't you? Okay I won't tell you then"

"Sorry, come on tell me, otherwise … "

They'd shared a armchair while they were eating and Molly had been sitting on his lap as they'd eaten sticky spare ribs which left them both with incredibly greasy, sticky fingers. He flexed his as he moved them towards her face in a gesture that said he was going to wipe them clean on her cheeks or hair so that she grabbed his wrists to stop him putting them anywhere near her face, or anywhere else for that matter….. .

She had been intending to ask whether he'd threatened Paul with anything, and if so, what? And if he had, she wanted to ask what he thought the chances were of Paul taking any bloody notice at all. There was a long silence as she thought about the million different questions that she wanted to ask but didn't know how to get straight in her head, because she didn't think there was a snowball's chance in hell of Paul taking any bleeding notice unless it suited him, that he wouldn't keep his mouth shut just because Charles had told him to. Once upon a time she'd known Paul well enough to know that that was something that was never going to happen, but now that she'd lied and told Charles that the Paul thing wasn't important to her any more it was difficult to know what to say or how to bring the subject up again. It wasn't that she still loved Paul, she didn't, actually didn't even know whether she ever had, but there was still so much crap in her head about him and about what had happened, what he'd done, so that he was still _there,_ and Charles' Friday night escapade had bought it all back in spades.

"Do you remember that night when we went to that restaurant in Bath?"

"How could I ever forget?"

"Yeah alright, not that bit" She giggled "Do you remember when we first got to your parents' place and I said about you seeing where my lot live? Do you remember what you said about looking forward to meeting them?"

"Of course I do, you told me you thought I was deranged"

"Well I know you are now don't I?" Molly chewed at her bottom lip "Maybe on me next days off, what do you think, I haven't seen them for ages" She smirked at him "I been a bit busy"

"I think that'd be perfect"

She paused, then looked at him from under her eyelashes as she tried to read his expression, there hadn't been any 'meet the family' stuff for either of them so far, she hadn't met Sam or his parents, well she already knew his mum but that was in a totally different context and she wasn't at all sure that it was a good idea now. Charles' divorce from Rebecca meant that he couldn't just introduce anyone to Sam as his girlfriend or his partner in case they might not be a permanent fixture, it would be confusing and wouldn't be fair to the little boy, and anyway she was nervous that Sam might not like her. On the other hand if she was going to introduce Charles to her lot, she needed to do it as soon as she could before she thought better of it and changed her mind.

"Maybe tomorrow if we get up in time? 'n I don't do perfect, you know that"

"No, you are perfect but shouldn't you ring your mum first, check with her that it'd be okay for me to come with you?"

"Nah, no need" She shrugged "Its home, innit?"

-OG-

"Come on if we're going to go, we'd better get going" Charles knew that Molly was nervous and unsure about the trip, about taking him with her to visit her family, she'd spent much more time than usual deciding what to wear, had done her face then washed all the make-up off again and had tied her hair back in a simple pony tail then brushed it loose again "If you've changed your mind we don't have to do this, you do know that, don't you?"

"Nah, it's alright, come on let's go"

Of course she'd changed her mind, the post 'making up, making love, sharing a chair to eat a take-away, seems like a really good idea' happy bubble had disappeared somewhere during the night and this little trip now felt like the most shit idea she'd come up with in a long time, and she'd had some pretty shit ideas recently. Driving to east Ham she spent the entire journey staring out of the side window and not saying a word, she couldn't, she didn't know what to say. She certainly wasn't going to say anything that would make it sound as though she was ashamed of her family, of where she grew up and where they still lived, their home, because she wasn't … it was just that it was all so different to anything he was used to. Her head told her she wasn't being fair to him, assuming that he'd react in the same way that Paul had to her family home, with that patronising metaphorical pat on the head that said 'there, there, we'll get you out of this shit-hole and find you somewhere decent to live' attitude, after all Charles was the one who was going to be standing trial by family, not her. She wondered how long it would take to be able to stop comparing everyone and every situation to twat-face, because she could see that Charles was worried, he didn't understand what was worrying her so much, but that was mainly because she hadn't made any attempt at all to explain it to him.

-OG-

"You might want to hold your breath before we go up them stairs; they bloody stink and watch where you're putting your feet 'n all"

"You okay?" He put his hand out and touched her shoulder, worried about how tense she was so that he made a misguided attempt to make her smile, or even better, laugh "Maybe you should have baked one of your speciality cakes to bring with us"

"Shit, now he's taking the piss, trying to be funny, at least I s'pose that was meant to be a bloody joke, cos it weren't funny"

"Listen, you need to calm down a bit, I promise you I won't tell filthy jokes and I won't grope you in front of your mum and I won't insist that she has to curtsey when she meets me and ….."

"Don't bloody tell me to calm down" She took a deep breath, this wasn't the way she'd planned "Yeah, yeah alright, you can stop now"

She was absolutely right, the steps did stink so that Charles carefully controlled the expression on his face, he'd been in places that smelled far worse when he'd been deployed, if not many and was now doing his absolute best not to betray any revulsion, but it really did remind him of the smell from some sort of Afghani public toilet. He caught sight of the sudden little twitch of Molly's lips as she looked at him out of the corner of her eye while looking down, she was taking her own advice to watch where she was putting her feet, and she could see him doing his 'I'm an army officer so rigid control of facial expression is essential' act, as she turned and caught his eye and then they both dissolved into gales of laughter, clutching at each other as the funny side of it hit them and then tried their best to control their mirth.

"Told you, didn't I? Who'd of thought I'd laugh at this khasi? God, it stinks"

"That's better" He cupped her face in his hands then smoothed her hair back behind her ears, her face had relaxed for the first time since they'd set off for east Ham, in fact, for the first time since they'd got out of bed that morning "Come on, I promise I'll behave"

-OG-

"Molls is that you? In 'ere"

Using her own key to let them in, Molly had called out to her mother as soon as they'd got inside the narrow hallway which was cluttered and littered with abandoned shoes and toys, with, as far as he could see, about a hundred coats hanging on a couple of hooks and piled up on the bannister rail. She was right; it was very different to Royal Crescent, not awful or anything, just different. He followed her into a kitchen where a fair haired and chubby woman was tackling a huge pile of ironing, a woman who unplugged the iron and abandoned it as soon as she set eyes on her daughter, then stopped mid-hug as she spied him standing in the doorway to one of the most untidy kitchens he'd ever seen, the work surfaces were covered in an assortment of stuff.

"Who's this?"

"This is a friend of mine, Charles" He smiled and Molly stood back a bit "Charles this is my mum"

Friend? _friend?_ Charles wanted to ask her whether that was how she saw him, then told himself not to be ridiculous, what did he expect her to say for fuck sake?

"Hello Mrs Dawes, it's lovely to finally meet you" He put his hand out to shake hers which seemed to disconcert her slightly, so that she coloured up and began to look a bit flustered.

"Belinda, call me Belinda" She made a visible effort to curb her curiosity about this very tall, very good looking and very posh sounding bloke that she'd never even heard of before, he'd said he was glad to _finally_ meet her, but she was bloody sure Molls had never mentioned him, not once "Put the kettle on Molls, we'll have some tea"

"Where is everyone Mum?"

"Your dad is …., well, you know where your dad is, and Jade and Bella have gone out with their mates, Oh and the boys are at some whatsit, thing, with the Cubs, that lunatic Brown Owl woman invited them all"

"She'll be bleeding sorry" Molly and Belinda both started cackling, the thought obviously giving them a lot of entertainment at the same time as making Charles wonder what it was about her brothers that made their family react like that, it was very different to the way his mother thought about Sam.

"What about Nan? Where's Nan"

"Moll, its Sunday afternoon so she's at hers, where else would she be? She'll be snoring in her armchair pretending to watch summat on the tele, I'll ring her in a bit tell her you're here, you and" She paused and looked at him with a tentative smile on her face, a smile that made her look so much like Molly, a resemblance that he hadn't seen when they'd first looked at each other "Charles"

"No, you're alright, Mum, we'll see her another time"

"You gonna be the one to tell her then, cos I'm not? What do you think she'll say when she finds out you was here and we never told her …. and that you'd bought someone, a bloke, sorry Charles I don't mean that in a funny sort of way… with you, she'll go on and on about how I might be grown up with kids of me own, but she's still my mum and I'm not too old for a clip round the ear"

-OG-

"Come here then and give me a bleeding hug young lady, now, where you been hiding yourself all this time?"

There had seemed to Charles to be a fair bit of tension in the room as they'd waited for Molly's Nan to finish her nap and turn up, he wasn't sure what it was all about because he knew that Molly adored her grandmother. They'd drunk their tea while they waited, and if he'd thought that the tea Molly made was strong, it had nothing on the brew Belinda handed him in a West Ham mug, the tea was the colour of creosote with half a sugar bowl in it and he thought it probably tasted like creosote if he knew what it tasted like but he was sure he could have stood his spoon up in it. He had this sudden vision of his mother sipping weak, straw coloured Indian tea using a bone china cup and saucer and smiled to himself at the irony of it.

"Who's this then?"

"Charles, this is me Nan" Molly shrugged and moved out of her grandmother's embrace putting her hand on his arm "Nan this is a friend of mine, this is Charles"

-OG-


	10. Chapter 10

_**A/N: Was obviously having a crisis of confidence yesterday, or more likely feeling sorry for myself! I haven't really got writers block as such, I know that that's what it sounded like, but I can usually bash away for a couple of thousand words ….. then I read it and have these massive doubts about what I've written so that my finger hovers over the delete button. My thanks to everyone who was supportive, especially to Debbie, resolution, I will try harder not to whinge.**_

 _ **-OG-**_

"So, is this young man the reason your mum hasn't seen hide nor hair of you for all this time then?"

"Course not, I been busy, Nan, anyhow he's not that young, he's older than he looks" Molly giggled as he nudged her shoulder with his and then shrugged as Nan raised her eyebrows giving her a little exasperated snort and making it plain that she wasn't amused and didn't believe her anyway "Just sayin'"

"Your mum misses you, I know that the others are here and that it's hard with the little bleeders under her feet all the time, but that don't mean she don't need to see you a bit more often, she worries 'bout you"

Belinda's "Mum leave it out" reminded Molly that this was what she'd been most afraid of, not that Belinda would say anything embarrassing or horrible, her mum wouldn't, but that her Nan would be blunt to the point of appearing downright rude.

Charles turned to look at Nan, she was tall, much taller than Molly or her mother, and slim with blonde hair and wasn't at all what he'd been expecting, although he wasn't sure what he had been expecting exactly. She didn't look anything like his own grandmother, she looked as if she was from a different generation altogether, much younger than he'd expected and about as far from a little old lady as it was possible to get. She'd was standing in the doorway with her arms folded leaning up against the frame and had refused to take him up on his offer of his seat on the sofa so that Charles was deeply uncomfortable to be sitting while an older lady was standing, until he realised that whether she knew it or not she'd done it deliberately. It was a classic warfare tactic to always be able to look down on and not up to your enemy, although he was hoping against hope that she wasn't going to turn out to be his enemy.

"Molly and I have been …. close …. friends ….for a while now so it probably is my fault, I met her when I was injured out in Afghanistan and ended up in hospital, Molly looked after me"

"What are you telling me here, that you're another one what's in the bleeding army?"

No-one could have missed seeing the sharp glance she directed at her granddaughter, a glance that was full of surprise and a lot of dismay at what she'd just heard so that there was no mistaking her feelings on the matter, she was appalled.

"Don't tell me he's a friend of that other one young lady cos I don't wanna have to get anyone to roll him in a carpet and lob him off a bridge on the M25, but I will, big as he is, you make no mistake about it, I ain't standing by while some other bugger messes with you, just watch if you don't believe me"

"No Nan, he's not a friend of …. He's just told you, he was in my clutches in hospital cos he nearly died when he got himself shot and he's still like on the sick now" She shrugged her shoulders and grinned then chewed her bottom lip, looking at her grandmother beseechingly, it was suddenly very important to her that Nan _liked_ him "He's a war hero" She giggled and nudged him back with her shoulder, she knew just how much he hated it when she said things like that.

"It's alright Molly" He decided not to respond to the 'war hero' tag, much as he hated it "I can promise your Nan that I'm not going to do anything to mess you about and it would give me the greatest of pleasure to be the one to put a contract out on Paul Walker, I'm only sorry that I can't"

"He's a good 'un Nan, really, he is"

"Yeah well, your grandad had a pretty face just like him, well maybe not quite as pretty and he had a Triumph Herald, mind he weren't never a bleeding hero, but I thought he was a good 'un, didn't I? And if I'd thought about it, I'd of picked the other one, now he was a good 'un, and then I would never of had all that grief with your grandad would I?"

"He hasn't got a Triumph Herald Nan" Molly was now openly laughing at her grandmother; Charles got the impression that this was something they'd all heard before.

"You know wot I mean young lady, and you can stop being so bleeding clever wiv your Nan as well"

-OG-

The return of her younger brothers from their Cub outing, all three of them as high as kites on sugary fizzy drinks and their own misbehaviour, which Brown Owl described at great length and in excruciating detail to their mother, meant that the 'getting to know you' conversations came to an abrupt halt. The boys has rushed in, hugged their sister, ignored Charles and were now tearing round the maisonette yelling at each other at the tops of their voices and scuffling like puppies as they ran up and down the stairs, taking no notice at all of their mother's repeated shouting at them to calm down and not to play on the stairs. Molly had followed her mother into the kitchen, leaving him at the mercy of Nan and the three Ninja's or so they described themselves. Nan just kept telling them to stop their bleeding showing off and then kept threatening to lamp them if they didn't stop immediately, but as none of them took the slightest bit of notice Charles presumed that it was a regular empty threat issued by their doting grandmother.

"Now, you listen to me young man while she's in the kitchen wiv her mum, our Molls, well, we're bleeding proud of her you know, she ain't had it easy, wot with her dad 'n that, then that prannit, that Paul, wot he done to her, but she's nearly finished now, wiv all her training 'n that so she's making summat of herself, so you just watch that you don't do nothing to mess that up for her"

"I'm extremely fond of her"

"I can see that, but you just make sure she knows it and that she never has anyfing to be sorry about"

-OG-

"What did my Nan say to you when I was in the kitchen with mum?"

"Yes, thanks for that, leaving me in the lion's den like that"

"You're a war hero, you can cope" She giggled as he put his hands round her throat pretending to throttle her "Don't be daft, she doesn't eat people, well, not on Sundays anyhow"

"Are you sure about that?"

"Nah" She shook her head and giggled as they got in the car, almost light headed with relief that it was all over, relief that was making her feel more giggly than usual "Was she marking your card for you or was she trying to _lure_ you away from me? She loves a pretty face"

"Yup, very funny, bloody hilarious, she told me that I have to keep on telling you that I love you, or something like that, but then you know that already don't you?"

"Yeah, quite like hearing it though" She smiled and put her hand on his arm "I was a bit worried about all this, you know, I kept on thinking, well worrying really about what you'd make of it, of them"

"I had noticed"

"Well it's all different to what you're used to with your family 'n that, innit? and I thought you might think it was all a bit ….that they was, I dunno really, a bit ….. " She shrugged, struggling to put her doubts into words, she couldn't think of the right ones.

"Molly, it's all a matter of luck, everything is luck, fluke, chance ….. where you're born, who you're born to" He shrugged "Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief, it's all luck, nothing else"

"Well, three out of four ain't bad for my dad"

He laughed "You're very lucky with your mum and Nan though and having all those brothers and sisters, I always wanted some when I was a kid"

"You wouldn't if you'd had 'em" They both laughed, remembering the way the boys had been behaving when they'd left the flat "It wouldn't take long till they was doin' your head in"

"So, when are we going to Bath then?"

-OG-

They'd visited Bath and she'd fallen in love …. with Sam …. and he'd fallen in love with her. They'd had a glorious day out in Weston, cold and windy, the sea a distant grey smudge on the horizon and with more than a hint of rain in the air so that they'd almost had the entire promenade to themselves and the seagulls. The three of them had run to keep warm, Molly and Charles running at Sam's pace which had suited them all, Sam because he hated to be left behind, Charles because he wasn't as fit as he'd once been and Molly because she literally hated running. They'd then eaten ice creams, supposedly to cool down from the running and Charles had leapt about and shouted, waving his arms around and making Sam fall about laughing as his dad did his best to keep the seagulls away as they circled nearby.

Sam had demanded that Molly tell him all about her brothers, about the things they'd got up to, he wasn't one bit interested in the girls, and Molly had had to promise him that she would take him to play with them during the next school holidays. She'd carefully avoided looking at Charles while she and Sam had the conversation, she didn't want to have it confirmed, but was pretty sure he'd be horrified.

Charles' dad had been away when they'd visited and Molly had the strongest possible suspicion that his mother, Margaret, had been briefed by her son. She was so matter-of-fact with Molly, simply saying how nice it was to see her again and not making any fuss at all, simply accepting of the fact that she and Charles were together so that it didn't take long for Molly's embarrassed reluctance to fade and disappear. Before they'd arrived at Royal Crescent she'd been adamant that they couldn't sleep together, that they couldn't share a bed in his parents' house because it would feel awkward and all wrong so that he'd laughed and asked whether she thought his mother imagined that they played scrabble all night at home. All of that seemed ridiculous as soon as she realised that his mother just took it as read, so much so that Molly had wondered and then demanded to know if he'd made a habit of bringing girls home to sleep with.

She was glad that she'd actually been in the house before, it still overwhelmed her a bit, but not as badly as it had the first time she'd visited although she was more than somewhat horrified to find out that the house was destined to be his, that it was in some wort of trust so that his mum and dad couldn't sell it even if they wanted to. She'd pulled a face at him when his mum had referred to it and had asked as soon as they were on their own whether he was, in fact, related to bleeding royalty, had then giggled when she explained that if he was, Nan would be absolutely thrilled and would forgive him anything, making him roar with laughter. She'd spent some time looking at the black and white framed photographs which lined the stairway, they were all of Charles, some of him alone, and some with various groups of soldiers in various different locations and they underlined for her just how good looking he was, how posh he looked in the ones that had been taken of him in full dress uniform and once again she questioned just what he was doing with a tatty east end bird like her. He was so far out of her league it was funny.

"You okay?" He smoothed her hair back from her face, remembering the last time they'd shared this bed and how different things were now, well in some ways, in others they were just the same "Did you enjoy yourself this afternoon?"

"Yeah, he's lovely, Sam, inne?"

"Yup, I think so, but then kids are"

"Not the ones I bleeding know" She giggled "Well, they are when they're asleep"

"Good job you don't want any then"

"Who said? I never said I didn't want kids, course I want kids, well I think I do anyhow"

"We were here in this room, in this bed when you said it"

"Oh yeah, but I never said I didn't want any, might of said I hadn't really thought about it but that's different, and anyhow I didn't really know you then, did I? Might even of been lying"

"Oh good"

"Oi, pack it in, I never said I wanted them now, did I? I meant later on when I'm grown up"

"Spoilsport"

-OG-

"Feel sick, think I might puke"

"No you don't, you won't, you're not going to, you're going to be fine, brilliant"

"Will you stop bleeding saying that, it's doing me head in now 'n you don't know that, you don't know nothing about it, you're just saying that to try 'n make me feel better"

"Wouldn't dream of it" He raised his eyebrows for a second making it obvious that he was humouring her then picked up the car keys and went to the door "Come on, time to go, now have you got everything? Pens, tissues, sweets, bottle of water, sick bags?"

"Bloody comedian, it's not funny" She lifted a woebegone face to his and wailed "Charles, what happens if I fail? And don't bleeding say that I'm not going to, you don't know that"

"Come on, we'll talk about it in the car, it won't help if you're late, will it?"

She'd finally moved in with him the day after they'd got back from Bath, the week prior to her exams starting saying that she couldn't stand the group hysteria of her floor of the nurses home, what with everyone going on about what they didn't know and how they wished they'd studied more and how they all kept on saying that if anyone was going to fail it was gonna be them … and on and on ….. . She'd pretended to Charles that it was only temporary, that she was only staying until the exams were over and he'd pretended to go along with that, even though they both knew that she wasn't going anywhere, it was just that it was still very difficult for Molly to admit to any sort of commitment.

"You said we'd talk about it in the car, so what will I do if I fail?"

"You're not going to fail, alright, alright" He leaned over at her irritated exclamation and took her hand, squeezing it then bringing it up and kissing the back of her knuckles before returning his full attention to the traffic jam they were caught up in "Look, worst case scenario, you can probably sit the bloody thing again, yes?"

"Yeah, s'pose so" She sniffed knowing that getting herself in a state so that she started crying before she even got to the exam hall was just about the worst thing she could do, it was just that she wanted to have some sort of fall-back plan in her head, to take the pressure off "I'll need a job though"

"No you won't, and will you stop worrying about things like that, I've got a job so we'd manage, we'd be fine"

"What? You're saying that you'd be my meal ticket, really would make me a bloody gold digger that, wouldn't it?"

"I'm not going to answer that, Molly, I'm tired of telling you that you are not a gold digger, that looking after each other goes with the territory" He grinned, then put his head back and laughed "Now, go on get in there and be brilliant, and Molls?"

"What?"

"You could always go back to the supermarket"

-OG-


	11. Chapter 11

_**A/N: Penultimate chapter of this, I thought I would finish updating it before moving on so I hope you enjoy it, I would appreciate it if you let me know.**_

-OG-

"I am so proud of you" He smirked "But I'm not going to say I told you so"

"Don't then, actually I'm pretty proud of me as well"

"But I did, though didn't I? I told you you'd be brilliant and I'm _always_ right" He laughed "You just need to remember that in future"

"Oh sorry hadn't noticed, smartass"

He picked her up and twirled her round, thoroughly enjoying the look of sheer relief and happiness on her face "Have you rung your mum? And you need to tell your Nan, then maybe she can ditch her plans to put a contract out on me"

"I'm sorry, you know, about the way she is, with you I mean" Molly shrugged and gave him a contrite little smile "She don't mean it, she loves you really"

"She's got a bloody funny way of showing it and if that's the case I'd hate to think how she'd be if she really didn't like me"

"Okay, well I think you might probably be able to tell, but she'll love you when she gets to know you better, she's just a bit, you know, suspicious"

"I know and she's just being protective because she loves you, well we all do Staff Nurse Dawes"

"I'll go and ring them, I wanted to tell you first"

Molly was high on a mixture of excitement and relief, she'd had a massive sense of achievement when she'd passed enough exams to start her training, especially bearing in mind her track record at school, and then she'd been even more excited when she'd been accepted on the course, but they were nothing compared to the euphoria she felt at that moment. It was as if she'd been drinking, which she fully intended to do even though she hadn't started yet, she'd just been desperate to get home to Charles so that she could tell him first. She could have phoned him and gone straight to the pub with the others, but she'd wanted to see his face when she told him.

"What now?"

"I'm meeting the rest in the pub, you coming?"

"No, you go off and celebrate with your mates, go and have fun and I'll come and collect you when you're pissed" He grinned "But I didn't actually mean right now, I meant in general, what's next?"

"Next, I see if I can find a job, so I'll have a look in the Nursing Times or on-line or maybe I'll look at doing some more sort of specialised stuff, you know, training to be a midwife or some'ing"

"I thought you had to be a nun to do that" He laughed, enjoying the sight and sound of her happiness "And I definitely don't want you to be one of those"

"What you don't fancy me in of them whatdoyoucall'em, wimples? "

"Only if I'm allowed to take it off, although come to think of it those costumes are quite sexy really, aren't they? All that covered up stuff"

"You been watching too much tele" She slapped him lightly on the backside "Anyhow think I'd better look for a job first, best look for someone stupid enough to employ me"

"Hey, you are brilliant and anyone who employs you will be bloody lucky to get you" He smoothed her hair away from her face then held her head between his hands resting his forehead against hers "Now, go on, get out of here, go and have a good time and ring me when you've had enough and I'll come and get you"

"Okay, okay I'm going, are you sure you don't wanna come with me?"

"Yup I'm sure, so go, go on, go, and that's an order"

"Alright, I'm going, I'm going" She giggled as she pretended to salute him "Bossy sod"

-OG-

Any talk about Molly moving out of the flat had petered away as the weeks had gone on and she would have needed to find somewhere anyway once she stopped working at Frimley Park because the Nurses Home there was for staff and students only, and anyway she was finding the thought of living away from him difficult to, as she put it, get her head round. There was however this huge problem simmering away in the background, a problem she didn't want to confront and that Charles simply maintained wasn't a problem and then hadn't mentioned since. The minute she'd qualified she'd started working shifts for an agency while she looked for a permanent job, doing agency work was satisfyingly well-paid but mainly involved working short notice nights and weekends, often in A&E. Molly hated the feeling of not knowing anyone, of not knowing where anything was kept or any of the individual routines of where she was working, as well as being the agency nurse meant that she nearly always got the shit end of the stick and got to deal with the almost endless stream of aggressive and/or vomiting drunks. If she wanted to carry on as they were, living together in Leatherhead, she had to find a permanent _proper_ job within an easy commuting distance, something that wasn't turning out to be nearly as easy as she'd thought it was going to be. She'd applied to St Peters at Chertsey and had been rocked back on her heels when she hadn't even got as far as having an interview before being rejected, despite the fact that she'd pulled loads of shifts in the A&E there and had thought she'd done quite well.

All those old feelings of being inadequate, of not being good enough had come flooding back so that she hadn't known whether she wanted to cry or to scream and throw things and had, in the end, done both, the disappointment was incredibly intense. Charles had said nothing, had just put his arms round her and stroked her back as she'd howled, and had then managed to resist the temptation to tell her that it wasn't the only job in the world, that there would be hundreds of others and that it was their loss, or any of the other dozen things that she wouldn't want to hear.

"Sorry" She'd got to the sniffing, snotty nosed, gulping stage of her crying fit and had just noticed that she'd soaked the front of his shirt with tears, or at least she hoped it was her tears as she blew her nose on the tissue he gave her.

"No need, you are allowed to be upset" He pulled his shirt away from his chest and looked down ruefully, then smirked at her "You're allowed to soak me as well, that's what I'm here for"

"Really?"

"Nope, but one thing Moll, it might just be a bit of a blessing in disguise, because if it all goes well at my medical and they say I'm fit enough, well, we don't know where they're going to post me, it could be anywhere" He shrugged, he didn't think it had occurred to her and he stupidly hadn't said anything about it before, probably because he was a bit worried that she would take it as a sign that as soon as she found a job she should be looking to move out and find somewhere of her own.

"What, you won't be stopping here?"

"I don't know, there's no bloody guarantee and I've been away a fair old time so it could be anywhere, Yorkshire, Salisbury Plain, stay here, literally it could be anywhere"

"Can't you tell them you wanna stop here? Well, you know Aldershot or somewhere like that?"

"Yup, of course I can tell them but it won't make any difference what I say because it doesn't work like that, this is the fucking army and I have to follow orders, I have to go where they decide to send me"

"Shit, they won't send you back to Afghanistan or somewhere like that will they?"

"No, there's no danger of that, not straight away anyhow"

"Thank fuck for that" She bit her lip "Why can't everything just go right, just for once?"

"It'll be okay, you'll get the job of your dreams wherever we live, it'll be fine, just wait and see and remember ….."

"Yeah I know, you're always bleeding right, smug bugger"

Charles wasn't 100% certain that passing his medical was going to be the foregone conclusion that he was pretending it was going to be when he talked about it to Molly. He still had some residual pain and stiffness in his leg which he wasn't admitting to, mainly when the weather was particularly cold or damp and he still had this annoying tendency to limp when he'd over-exercised in his attempts to improve his general level of fitness. He knew it was a bit stupid but he was adamant that he wanted to get back to the sort of life he'd had before it had all gone to shit, the idea of being shunted off to sit behind a desk filled him with horror. If he was sure of one thing it was that if it came to that he would resign his commission.

-OG-

The day of his medical was the day that Molly got scared as she sat cross legged in the middle of the bed and watched him getting dressed in his brown formal dress uniform and became horribly afraid that everything was about to go the same way that every other relationship she'd ever had, everything was about to go tits up and she didn't know how to stop it or what had started the rot.

"You've lost a bit of weight haven't you?"

"Yes a bit, but then, quite a lot has gone on since I last wore this bloody thing"

"Might gonna have to feed you up a bit" She giggled, worried at the tense expression on his face "Maybe even make you a cake or some'ing"

"Lovely"

"Are you even listening to me?"

"Sorry"

His uniform was decidedly loose, something he hadn't noticed when he'd worn his red mess jacket, so that this jacket felt big on the shoulders and he'd had to do the belt up one notch tighter than usual. The legacy of the gruelling six month deployment in the heat and dust of Afghanistan, of sustaining a life threatening injury with the resultant long stay in a hospital bed had all taken its considerable toll so that he ran his tongue over his teeth then chewed at his bottom lip and contemplated his reflection in the mirror. He hardly looked the picture of a fit and healthy soldier bursting with renewed vigour and enthusiasm for the rigours of army life, to his own eyes he looked pale and a bit thin, slightly hollow eyed and more than a little bit haggard with an anxious expression in his brown eyes.

"Do you want me to come with you, hold your hand?"

"No, it's alright" He turned round to smile at her where she still sat in the middle of the bed watching him get ready "Thanks anyway but that would really convince them, wouldn't it? If I turn up with my own personal medic in tow"

"Well, I won't tell them if you don't" She wanted desperately to get off the bed and give him a reassuring hug, to try and make him feel better, but his ramrod straight stance and miserable, tension filled face warned her off. She simply hadn't realised quite how worried he was about this medical, he had been so sanguine and gung ho about it that she had been completely taken in by his act of all this being a simple formality. Now she wanted to tell him that it really didn't matter, except that she could see that it did, it mattered enormously "I could wait for you outside in the car if you wanted"

"No, I appreciate the offer thanks but I've got no idea how long it will take, it could be hours and I would worry about you sitting out there getting bored or cold or something"

"Give you some'ing else to worry about though wouldn't it, take your mind off everything"

"I'm not worried"

"No course you're not"

The Charles she knew had vanished as the one who was now wearing his face also disappeared through the front door, forgetting to kiss her goodbye so that he returned a couple of minutes later to peck her on her cheek where she still sat in the middle of the bed, wondering what the fuck to do for the rest of the day, she couldn't just mooch about the flat worrying about him.

"Ring me when you get done"

"Okay, and don't look so worried I'm going to be fine" He did his best to infuse some confidence into his voice but was horribly afraid that she would know that he was lying.

"Course you are" She also tried to sound as though she believed what she was saying and actually did a better job of it than he had, so that he smiled and waved before he closed the front door and Molly's shoulders sagged from the effort of keeping the optimistic expression on her face.

-OG-

She had no idea when things had started to fall apart or why she hadn't noticed before that the happy bubble they'd been living in was just that, a bubble filled with loads of laughter and fuelled by a great deal of sex, but all the same a bubble that seemed to have just burst leaving her unsure why or of what to do next. From the first few days of their relationship she'd had no doubts about him, about them, at all. Even when they'd fallen out over him talking about her to Paul, underneath she'd still been convinced that they would last and that it would be nothing like any of the others, especially not like Paul Walker, but if she had learned anything from that fiasco it was how to spot the signs. Looking at him this morning, standing there in his army uniform, he'd looked nothing like the Charles she knew, he'd had his hair cut short, regulation army length she reckoned so that the back of his neck looked white and vulnerable and he was clean shaven, no stubble today. He'd looked upright and remote, every inch the stern-faced officer so that she was now asking herself where his smile, the smile that melted her heart, had gone.

Eventually she got up and got dressed and spent a couple of hours searching on-line for a job, but then didn't actually e-mail out her CV to anyone because none of seemed to matter that much today, her heart simply wasn't in any of it. All she kept thinking about was what he was doing and whether he was okay, whether his leg would start to hurt and let him down, he didn't seem to realise, and she had never told him, that she knew full well that it still hurt him sometimes, she was a nurse for fuck sake, she could tell when someone had pain no matter how hard they worked trying to hide it.

Charles knew it was a close run thing as he sat and answered the medic's questions after his spell on the treadmill and then the very senior little doctor checked and nodded over the strip of results from his ECG and all the other tests that they'd completed. He wasn't worried about any other aspect of his fitness apart from his leg, his stomach wound had healed perfectly and he had no problems with his general health, no breathlessness or unusual fatigue or pain or anything, it was just his bloody leg.

"Well, Captain, you know as well as I do that you haven't achieved anything like a 100% recovery in that leg, but, given your general fitness and the amount of recovery that has already taken place, I am minded to pass you as fit, with the proviso however that you have to accept that pain is your body's way of telling you to stop whatever it is you're doing so that you can continue to recover and that you report any new problems immediately, okay?"

"Thank you Sir"

"Okay, well I'll be sending my report off to your CO so …. Welcome back Captain" He nodded then held up one hand "Oh and Captain?"

"Yes Sir?"

"Don't let me down"

Charles saluted and couldn't keep the broad grin off his face, he was light headed with relief as he made his way to the car park, got out his phone to call Molly, then checked the time on his watch. She wasn't expecting to hear from him at any specific time because he'd had no idea how long all this would take and now he just wanted to see her face when he told her so that they could start to celebrate that the huge weight had been lifted from his shoulders. Of course making their plans would have to wait for a bit, there was still the matter of where he was going to be posted, and for that he just had to wait for the meeting with his CO when he would be told what was going to happen …... and where and when.

-OG-

The sound of his key in the lock came as a massive relief to Molly as she flew into the hallway, knowing the news was good the instant she caught sight of the euphoric grin on his face. It had been one of the longest days she could ever remember, she'd spent hours pacing backwards and forwards to the window looking up and down the street checking for his car, checking her phone every few minutes to make sure that it was working, that she had plenty of charge and that the signal was okay and resisting the temptation to call him. She'd tried and failed to find something constructive to do to pass the time, which had crept by, had cleaned every inch of the kitchen then done her nails and had tried and failed to find something even remotely interesting on daytime television.

"Why the fuck didn't you ring me?"

"Sorry, I just wanted to get home to tell you" He bit his bottom lip trying to stop the ecstatic smirk from reappearing on his face, knowing that he should have done what he'd promised.

"I can see that everything's okay, but you said you'd call and I been a bit worried"

"Sorry" He put his arms out trying his best to look contrite "Any chance of a hug?"

-OG-


	12. Chapter 12

"Hang on a second, I'm not going to bed wearing this lot"

"I never said I wanted you to go to bed, did I? Wait till you're asked"

"Didn't you?"

"Well maybe I might have just thought that you might be just a little bit tired, you know, that you might gonna need to have a bit of an early night"

"It's not even four o'clock yet and actually, I'm completely bloody knackered, I'm not sure I've got the energy"

"You don't need any energy, I've got plenty I've spent all bloody day hangin' about worrying 'bout you"

"Go on then" He couldn't stop his gales of laughter as he looked down into a pair of Bambi eyes which were looking at him alight with a mixture of relief and mischief "But I _am_ going to take this lot off first"

"I'll help you"

" _That_ is not helping me"

"Innit? Thought it was, well feels like it is to me"

Molly had never before taken all the initiative and seduced anyone and she found it incredibly erotic as she stopped giggling and started kissing him round his neck, tiny light fleeting kisses, her long hair falling across his chest as she moved from his collar bones down to his nipples, nipping at them lightly before trailing kisses down his muscles towards his hip, then across his stomach to his navel before carrying on kissing downwards, the same light fleeting kisses so that he was groaning and tilting his hips upwards toward her. His eyes were closed with his head tilted back slightly as he chewed at his bottom lip but she wouldn't let him touch her at all, every time he moved to do anything, to touch her in any way even to kiss her she stopped what she was doing and stopped him by saying _**no**_ very forcibly. She was enjoying herself immensely, driving him mad gave her a feeling a power that she was loving at the same time as experiencing an incredible amount of desire for him, more than she'd ever felt before for anyone in her life. Desire mixed with relief was a heady cocktail, relief that he'd got what he'd wanted from his medical, although she couldn't help wondering just how many lies he'd had to tell to get it, together with the overwhelming relief that she'd been panicking unnecessarily when she'd convinced herself that he wanted her gone from his life.

There was just the sound of heavy breathing slowly returning to normal as the light faded outside and he moved to pull the duvet over them, chilly now that the sweat was drying on their bodies, he was physically and emotionally exhausted and full of a sleepy deep contentment. It had been a very long and very gruelling day which he'd been dreading for some time and the last few minutes had been such a satisfying end to a sensation filled magic experience that he didn't want to think about anything other than just holding her, lightly stroking the arm curled across his chest with the back of his hand then drawing circles on her shoulder with his fingertips, glorying in the feel of her naked body relaxed against his.

"Happy?"

"Why the hell wouldn't I be? Jesus Molly, I couldn't possibly be any happier, could I?"

"I dunno, I was probably being a bit ….. well, you know what I'm like, but I sort of need to know, I need you to tell me, I was a bit worried earlier that you might be regretting us …. regretting me"

"God, where do you get these bloody ideas from?" He shook his head "I only care about you, you know that, I just want to make you happy, that's all I ever want to do"

"You just did that, made me happy I mean"

"Ditto"

He seemed to have drifted off to sleep as she lay next to him listening to his calm even breathing and watching his face which was now smoothed out of the frowns and wrinkles that had been there first thing that morning, almost as if it had been ironed, all his worries seemed to have disappeared leaving him looking ten years younger as he slept, and filling her with all sorts of affection for him.

"Stop staring"

"I'm not staring, just lookin' and anyhow thought you was asleep"

"I will be if I stay here much longer, come on I'm bloody starving, I haven't actually eaten anything today so how about we go out and celebrate"

"Thought we just did that"

"We did, but now we're going to go out and have a lovely meal as well"

-OG-

"Warminster? Where the fuckety fuck is Warminster?"

"What, you've never been there? It's in Wiltshire, you'll like it, it's nice" He smirked then couldn't control his need to laugh "Lots of trees"

"Nah, never been there, never even heard if it" She considered what he'd just told her "Shit, I hate trees they give me the bloody willies" She paused "Please tell me there's a Top Shop and a Starbucks 'n that?"

"I have got no idea, it's been a while since I needed to shop in Top Shop"

"Stop bleeding laughing it's not funny" Molly was doing her best not to join in and laugh with him "It all sounds a bit shit if you ask me, and what the fuck am I gonna do in bloody Warminster?"

Meeting with his CO had been a happy couple of hours or so for Charles, there had been a gratifying amount of welcome back from everyone he'd seen at the garrison, not only the officers but also the lower ranks he'd had contact with before he'd been injured and especially from a group of his own lads who'd last seen him being stretchered away to a MERT off a filthy bridge in Afghan, they all made a point of stopping to welcome him back.

Weapons Training Establishment in Warminster wasn't quite what he'd hoped for, he'd really wanted to get back to his Infantry comfort zone, but there was always a chance, or a danger as Molly would see it, that he could be deployed to a war zone if he was an Infantry Captain, something that was highly unlikely if he was ensconced in a training establishment. He was given three weeks leave to sort himself out before he was due to take up the reins of his new role and now just had the task of persuading Molly that it was a good idea, he raised his eyebrows to himself as he started the car for the drive back to Leatherhead, he had a feeling that she wouldn't think much of the location of their new lives, bearing in mind her thoughts on trees.

"Believe it or not they do have a health service in Wiltshire, they even have hospitals so I'm told" He sniggered slightly "They sent the witch doctors packing a long time ago"

"Don't be sarky, you're not being funny" She giggled in spite of doing her best to sound as though she was serious about being concerned and reluctant.

"What, not even a little bit? Bugger, thought I was, listen, we'll be able to stop living in this fucking shoe box for a start, we can find somewhere decent, somewhere with cupboards so that you can put your stuff away" He paused then couldn't help laughing "And a garden with lots of trees"

"Hilarious, 'ere, you saying I make a mess? Bloody army neat freak! Anyhow, I'm not so sure that I'll be able to afford any of that, well, only if I get a job straight off or find an agency to give me lots of shifts"

"You know, Molly, there are times ….. "

He shook his head, taking a deep breath and not finishing his sentence as he got up and walked over to the window keeping his back turned to her as he looked at the suburban street outside, then swallowed his irritation to finish what he wanted to say "Sometimes you drive me fucking nuts with all that 'we're not together' shit"

"Don't know what you mean"

"Oh yes you do, you know exactly what I mean" He glanced over his shoulder then turned back to the view from the window keeping his back towards her "Just how long are you going to let that arsehole define your life? Because that's you're doing, it seems as if you're afraid to let yourself believe ….. I don't know, I know you're scared, and I can understand that and maybe that you're not 100% sure whether you trust me or not, but do you think there's any chance at all that you could maybe forget all that shit because I'd really like you to try"

"What you saying?"

"Did you have an engagement ring from Walker?"

"Course, but what's that gotta do with anything?" She shrugged.

"What did you do with it?"

"Well, was going to give it back, you know, throw it at him, but then I thought sod it and flogged it on Ebay, why?"

"Just wondered" He took a deep breath and shook his head "No, that's not it, I'd like you to think about us getting married, about you marrying me because I love you and I think you love me" He raised one eyebrow making it plain that that had been intended as a question that she needed to answer.

"Yeah I do"

"I want us to be a family, to make a life together where we look out for each other and then it won't matter who pays the fucking rent" He shrugged, then grinned "You can feed me up with your wonderful baking"

"You got a death wish or some'ing?" She couldn't help chuckling a tiny bit, not at all sure what she wanted to say "We're alright as we are, aren't we?"

"Just think about it, that's all I'm asking"

Molly took a deep breath, she didn't have a clear idea of what she wanted to say, she'd spent so long telling herself and everyone around her that she would never, ever again go there again, that she was allergic to the whole idea, that she didn't know how to say anything different, how to even think anything different, but the combination of the fear she'd felt the morning he'd gone off for his medical, coupled with the horrible uncertainty that had nagged at her somewhere in the back of her head ever since, meant that she wasn't so sure any more. Even she recognised that the sex they'd shared when he'd got home that day had had an element of desperation about it, she had needed to connect with him in a way that allayed some of her deepest fears of losing him, of history repeating itself, and knowing that if that happened it would be far, far worse this time because losing him was unthinkable.

"Have you thought about what people will say? About me, about us? If we do that"

"I don't give a fuck what people say, the ones that are important will just be happy for us"

"Yeah, s'pose, okay"

"Okay what?"

"Yeah, okay, well maybe get married, if that's what you really want, if you mean it and you're not just sayin' ….."

"Of course it's what I want, I wouldn't have asked if it wasn't, and what do you mean, _okay maybe_?"

"Sorry, just sayin' …. okay"

"Okay isn't a very romantic answer is it? I was hoping for something more on the lines of 'Yes Charles I'd love to marry you'" He laughed and walked across the room, pulled her to her feet then wrapped her in a hug "On the other hand, okay will do if you mean it"

"Yeah I do, mean it I mean"

-OG-

Molly stared at her grandmother incredulously as she carried on telling the most outrageous lies, maintaining that she'd always said, in fact she had always sworn, that Charles was one of the good 'uns and that she'd said over and over that you don't get many of them to the pound and just because he was posh and had a pretty face didn't mean that you shouldn't trust him. Much as she was tempted, Molly decided not to pick Nan up on what she was saying, her grandmother wouldn't take a blind bit of notice so it'd be a complete waste of breath to even try, so she satisfied herself by raising quizzical eyebrows at Belinda in total disbelief at her grandmother's _volte face_ as her Mum smiled and shrugged her shoulders.

Charles had taken a trip down to Warminster to do some meeting and greeting and sorting out of stuff so Molly had opted to let him go and check out the 'tree' situation in the gardens of the houses they were considering renting. He was going to count them for her, or so he promised, although she had her doubts, so she'd taken a trip out to east Ham, ostensibly to see how everyone was, but mainly, if she was being honest to show off a little bit, to show them all the new piece of jewellery she was sporting on her third finger of her left hand. Charles had warned her that if she decided she couldn't hack living with him in Warminster and put it on Ebay, he was going to get Nan to put a contract out on her. He'd wanted her to wait so that they could make the trip together, but she'd decided it would be best to go on her own first off just in case Nan said something that would force her to throw a massive strop and be incredibly rude, something she didn't really want him around to see.

"Oi, 'ere just thought, you're not bleeding pregnant are you? I hope that's not why you're getting married my girl because if it is I'm telling you now, it's not the bleeding answer, just look at your mum and dad, see how that ended up"

"No Nan, I'm not pregnant, and Mum and Dad got married because they love each other, well once upon a time they did, and I'm pretty sure they still do when Dad's not being a total twat, and they didn't get married just because she was pregnant with me, did they? I was a bit of a bonus so it wasn't all bad was it?"

Molly was telling the truth when she told Nan that she wasn't pregnant, she'd had a bit of a scare after his medical, actually with very good reason, a scare she hadn't even mentioned to him even though it had gone as far as her needing to pee on a stick, a scare that had ultimately led to nothing. On the whole, she'd been relieved because she didn't know whether she was ready to have kids, she knew that Charles wanted them, but what she really wanted, more than anything else, well, apart from him, was to get a job, to spend some time being what she'd trained so hard to be.

"Now, you just remember my girl, it was 'im what was the wotsit in the shagpile, not you, you did _nothing_ wrong so you got _nothing_ to be ashamed about, just put your slap on, get your best frock out and go along there with that bloody 'andsome bugger of yours and smile at 'em all no matter what"

"Yes Nan"

It was the best possible advice and Molly knew it, but that didn't stop her being thoroughly apprehensive at the thought of attending this farewell drinks party mainly because she was horribly afraid that Paul would be there, he was bound to have heard about their engagement by now and he wouldn't want to miss the opportunity of proving he wasn't afraid of Charles.

-OG-

"You look incredible, you are so gorgeous" Charles held her at arm's length outside the room where his party was being held "Are you ready to get in there and show them what a lucky bastard I am?"

"Yeah, Nan told me to stick a grin on me gob and not to let anyone see I were worried about any of this"

"I always said she's a wise old bird, didn't I?"

"No"

Four hours later Molly kicked off her shoes and flung her arms round his neck as they closed the front door behind them, both of them slightly the worse for wear as he pressed her up against the wall of the narrow hallway and started kissing her, then picked her up so that she wound her legs round his waist. She couldn't think now why she'd been so reluctant to go to this party this evening, it had been a very happy few hours with lots of laughter and 'sorry you're going' for Charles and 'lovely to meet you' for her and he'd stayed with her holding onto her hand and giving it the occasional reassuring squeeze, until after a while she'd found that she didn't need to stay glued to his side for confidence, that she could mingle and chat on her own as freely as everyone else in the room.

"I have been waiting to do that all evening"

"Can't believe he never showed, twat-face I mean"

"I know who you mean, and I told you, he's a coward, he couldn't face you …. he couldn't risk them finding out what a lying fucking scumbag he is, but it doesn't matter anymore, he doesn't matter anymore, does he? He's history"

"Yeah, you're right, can't think why I was still bothered … let's go to bed"

"You're bloody insatiable you, aren't you?"

"Yeah I know, aren't you the lucky one?"

"Indeed"

-OG-

 _ **Epilogue…**_

A tall dark-haired soldier in full dress uniform and a small long-haired girl in a simple white dress stood hand in hand in a patch of sunlight at the front of a room full of people, including a number of children, one of whom, a dark-haired little boy, was holding a cushion with rings on it.

The couple looked at one another and exchanged matching happy grins then turned to look at the grey-haired middle aged woman in front of them, a woman who looked around the room and smiled as she began to speak, a faint West Country burr in her voice.

" _A very warm welcome to you all, friends and families, we have been invited here this morning in the presence of these witnesses to share with Molly and Charles a very important day in their lives …"_

-OG-

 _ **A/N: HEA a speciality, I do love 'em, I hate to read or watch anything that ends with a load of miseries, so predictable or not I can't help myself, I just have to write them. I hope you enjoyed it, please review for me.**_


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